


In the Blood Red Dust

by quickreaver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver/pseuds/quickreaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Leviathan are rapidly infesting the world; life is getting grim for hunter and civilian alike. Out of the seeming blue, the brothers Winchester are whisked from the frying pan and into a fire, circa 1873. Dean is dumped into Mongrel, Nevada—a near–lawless mining town—where he discovers a bigger threat than protecting one’s share of the silver. Sam finds himself in the desert, no horse in sight, named or otherwise. The boys must reunite, deal with a woman known as the White Witch, address Mongrel’s pesky werewolf situation, and decide if they want to return to a doomed future, crawling with Big Mouths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> It truly does take a village to raise a child! Fondest thanks go out to (in no particular order) [monicawoe](http://monicawoe.livejournal.com/), [thruterryseyes](http://thruterryseyes.livejournal.com/), [geckoholic](http://geckoholic.livejournal.com/), [jennytork](http://jennytork.livejournal.com/) and [amber1960](http://amber1960.livejournal.com/)\--all of whom helped me whip this into shape. They did their best; any remaining mistakes are mine. Concrit is heartily welcomed, please and thank you! Enjoy...

CHAPTER ONE

 

The air whipping in the windows of their car _du jour_ was meltingly hot. Dean tried to drain a few precious drops of clean water from the old canteen but it’d been emptied two hours ago; moisture wasn’t going to magically appear no matter how hard he wished. He’d long since abandoned hope that Castiel would be anything but batshit nutty if the angel ever showed up, so there was no sense in praying for help either.

He could practically feel his lips cracking, the arid wind offering not one damned bit of relief. He threw the canteen into the backseat and kept driving.

Another ten minutes down the dusty road, Dean’s stomach announced its hunger loud enough to make Sam startle in his sleep. It was probably just an autonomic reaction to an angry growl, but didn’t change the fact they were not only dehydrated, but fucking starving. And not just “Oh, gee, I could eat” starving but Dean’d had to notch his belt tighter just to keep from flashing his ass to the world. He glanced over at Sam as his brother stirred, bruised eyes slitting open, a hand pulling through his snarled hair.

“Where’re we?” he mumbled, sounding about as cracked as Dean’s lips.

“Utah.”

“Utah’s a big state.”

“Doesn’t really matter where in Utah, does it?” Leviathans were everywhere; a healthy Mormon population didn’t thwart the monsters’ numbers, so yeah, what did it matter?

Sam seemed to agree because he settled into silence again, staring at the parched landscape flying past. They couldn’t even kill the quiet with the radio; the crappy Kia Rio they’d jacked in Colorado didn’t have one that worked. They’d have opted for a better model, but the Rio was practically a gift. Its owner had left the car running while he’d wandered off to do … whatever. Probably full to the gills with Leviathan-tainted turkducken and looking for seconds. And thirds.

The grimness of the situation was increasingly difficult to ignore. Sam, Mr. Let’s-talk-it-out, wasn’t even bothering to complain any more. That’s how bad it’d gotten. Bobby and Frank were dead, Castiel was a few bees short of a hive, the Big Mouths were closing ranks, and Dean kept struggling to find a reason to put one foot in front of the other. Hard to work up rebellion when all you knew was hunger and sleeplessness and worry.

His eyes were starting to gloss over when Sam sat upright, glaring out the window.

“There. Turn back. Down that road.”

“Wha—?” Had they even passed a road?

“Think I saw something.”

Dean threw a u-turn across both lanes, the car plenty small enough for such a tight turning radius. Dirt and gravel kicked up into the wheel wells. “What kinda something? Big Foot? A parade? What?”

“Trees.”

“Okay, nature boy, if you say so.” But Sam didn’t make observations frivolously these days. If there was something about these trees that caught his interest, it was worth investigating. Besides, it wasn’t like they had anywhere better to be. All the Dick Roman intel was as dried up as the land.

The car rocked down a pitted single lane until the surroundings grew marginally greener. Somehow, the area was getting water. Someone still had the wherewithal to work the land and irrigate it. The trees sat in evenly-spaced parcels and though the weeds were growing tall and unruly, this had all the earmarks of an orchard.

Sam was leaning half out the window, looking hard for signs of life. Dean slowed the Rio, and eventually Sam pointed his long arm towards a side-alley.

“Truck,” he barked. He did kinda look like a big Irish Retriever, Dean mused.

They followed the lead, easing the car between branches. An old Chevy pick-up came into view, and Sam didn’t even wait for Dean to stop the car before he opened the door and rolled out. They weren’t traveling fast, between navigating trees and potholes and thick weeds.

Sam approached the truck and Dean noted his brother’s posture; though bent from riding in the tight quarters of the sub-compact, it wasn’t tense with suspicion. Dean kept the car running, regardless.

Entering the thigh-high grasses, Sam paused and looked up into the cloudless sky. Dean followed his gaze: vultures, overhead. Bad sign. Sam crouched, half-vanishing in the weeds. Dean saw little more than his rawboned shoulders, expanding in a sigh and when Sam stood back up, he looked decidedly grim—grimmer than before, if that was even possible.

“There are bodies,” he said flatly.

“Shit.” Dean cut the engine and got out.

The partially eaten corpses of several workers in ichor-stained overalls were hidden by the bramble, and now Dean could smell the decay. The wind must’ve been blowing in the wrong direction before. From the notably large bite marks on the remains, it was clear how they’d met their deaths. Why the Leviathans hadn’t eaten them completely was anyone’s guess. Maybe it was becoming sport to the fuckers.

Dean’s gut twisted and might’ve tossed its contents had it not been empty already. “Poor bastards. Wish I could say I’m surprised.”

“Yeah. I know.” Sam stepped over a lump of flesh and leaned into the open door of the truck. The ignition clicked but the engine was just as dead as the bodies.

Dean made a cursory search for anything useful—money, knives, cellphones—but the bodies had already been stripped. Scavenging was standard operating procedure these days.

Sam had found nothing in the cab of the truck either, as evidenced by his empty hands and hang-dog expression. “Damn. Still. I was hoping …”

Dean squinted around the orchard, hands on his hips, and then his brows lifted. “Hey. Might be somethin’ here after all.” He pointed up into the trees. Bunched in the gnarly higher branches, obscured by leaves, were ripe clusters of peaches. The low-hanging fruit had long since been snagged whereas the treetops still hung heavy with unharvested produce.

Sam waded through the weeds to the Rio and clambered up the hood to the roof of the car. It rocked and dented under his weight but he could reach the tops of the trees this way.

 _You go, you tall freak._ Dean found himself grinning.

Sam plucked a single peach and tossed it to Dean, who snatched it from mid-air. His mouth watered wantonly but as much as he wanted to take a bite, he forced himself to wait. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans and removed a tiny vial containing vinegar. It had come as no surprise to people-in-the-know that the Leviathans had leaked tainted pesticides and fertilizers to the farmers. Quite by accident, hunters had discovered that the poisoned crops would foam slightly when exposed to a dab of common, household white vinegar. Prior to cooking, at any rate.

Dean did the dab test and let out a whoop. _Then_ he took a big fat bite. The taste exploded in his mouth and he experienced a ridiculous amount of joy over a lone piece of fruit. It would’ve been embarrassing had he given two fucks but in that moment, peaches were the closest thing to heaven he’d experienced since, well, _Heaven_.

Sam beamed like a fool from his perch atop the Rio and stripped off his t-shirt. He tied a quick knot in the bottom and began feeding peaches through the neck opening.

“Jesus, you’ve gotten skinny,” Dean hollered with his mouth full.

“Shuddup, so’ve you.” Sam kept collecting fruit, pausing only briefly to take a bite himself.

“Right you are, sir; pass me another!”

Sam lobbed the bitten peach to Dean, who grumbled “This has got your germs on it,” but ate the thing anyway. Two additional peaches later, Dean was finally slowing down when Sam stopped picking, head tilting. 

“What was that?”

Dean shrugged and carefully scanned the area in a full circle, eyes keen for any signs of movement.

Then he felt it, a shimmer in the world. The hair on the back of his neck prickled and the air eddied, almost like a sonic boom minus the ‘sonic’ part. “Earthquake?”

Sam softened his knees, readying to jump if need be. “Don’t think so. Kinda feels like when Castiel uses his magical angel trans—”

With a rush of wind and the nauseating pull of g-forces on his gut, Dean lost all orientation, spinning tits over tail. Fierce vertigo made it impossible to think, let alone react. The atmosphere swelled and pressurized until, with an ear-popping wallop, Dean was spit back out.

Where? He hadn’t a stinking clue.

Except that out of nowhere, there was a fist and it was flying straight at his face.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

 

Dean saw white-hot stars and tasted blood down the back of his throat. Then came the pain. A considerable amount of it, centered somewhere in the neighborhood of his nose. He dropped to his knees on a wooden floor, cupped a palm under his nostrils as the red dripped out. He was afraid to touch anything. Probably broke his whole damned face.

“Where the cock-suckin’ fuck did you come from?” The man, presumably on the other end of the fist, gawked down at Dean. The guy didn’t stay confused for long; a boot rocketed up into Dean’s chin and sent him sailing backwards. He smashed into a table and the deceptively cheerful skittering of poker chips rained down around him, rolling off under more tables and booted feet. He couldn’t be sure, what with the throbbing in his face that spread into his brain, but Dean thought he noticed the glint of metal on some of the heels. Spurs.

There were screams and shouts and the dull cracks of more fists hitting bone, but thankfully it wasn’t Dean on the sorry end of the punches this time. He couldn’t stand up—his legs weren’t exactly cooperating—but he could roll away from what was left of the table and find refuge behind some sort of curtain.

The curtain, however, took exception. A woman squealed and spat at him, shifting her layers of skirts and fixing him with a glare full of daggers.

Dean lifted a hand, the less bloodied one, in a desperate signal of surrender. “Sorry, lady. My bad. Just … just don’t get your panties in a wad—”

Those were, perhaps, not the smartest words Dean Winchester had ever uttered. From the folds of the woman’s skirts—which, upon closer inspection, were not particularly clean—she produced a small, old-fashioned snub-nosed gun. Might even have been an antique Derringer, if Dean wasn’t imagining things. It leveled at his head and he back-peddled. Fast.

A slug cracked into the floor beside him.

“Jesus! I didn’t do nothin’!” Dean shielded his face with a shoulder and scrambled away from the crazy lady, soles slipping in the dirt and sawdust and now, blood.

Tables were being flipped and more punches thrown. A spray of liquor followed the crash of breaking glass and Dean kept moving, low to the floor, until he found shelter between a piece of furniture and the corner of the room. 

_Room?_ Where the hell was he? Where the hell _was Sam_?

He touched his nose gingerly, assessed that the bleeding had mostly stopped and it probably wasn’t broken after all. He smelled iron and whiskey and the sour stench of unwashed bodies, but not peaches or death. The slant of the sun through the windows, what little he could see from cover, was late-day and long-shadowed. He rocked back against a wood paneled wall, and the furniture he’d hidden behind twanged and jolted when a body bounced off it. Several piano keys sprung loose like busted teeth.

He waited until the piano stopped shuddering before peering around the corner again. It seemed to be a good ol’ bar brawl, which Dean had suspected, but this wasn’t just any bar. It was rugged and filthy and lit by kerosene lamps suspended from ceiling beams. There were antlers and tin-type photographs on the walls and the clientele, mostly male, wore hats, suspenders and a week’s worth of grime.

This was a saloon. And it looked suspiciously like one he’d visited before. In a very different time.

_Fan-fuckin’-tastic._

Dean started to move away from the safety of the piano. Sam had to be here somewhere; he’d felt the temporal quiver too. He had to have been caught in the same Magical Mystery Tour that dragged Dean to Dodge City, or wherever the hell this place was.

As Dean took a step forward, a voice hissed at him from the other side of the piano: “Don’t.”

He pulled back just as a brass spittoon soared past his head and whumped into the wall, chunks of soggy tobacco and dark, disgusting syrup splattering the area, the piano and Dean.

“Aw, what the hell?” Dean flicked his fingers, brushing black stuff from his shirt. At least it wasn’t Leviathan bits, but man, this was _so_ not helping.

“Things got all bag o’ nails right quick, didn’t it?” The voice spoke again, sounding a touch amused at Dean’s situation.

“S’pose it did,” Dean groused, looking down the piano.

The guy was roughly youngish, the same way he and Sam were, and marginally cleaner than the other patrons. He adjusted his bent, wire-rimmed glasses and grinned at Dean; his teeth were crooked but still free of rot. City slicker, Dean guessed, or younger than he looked.

“Columbus McCallum.” The man reached across the piano, spidery fingers extended in a risky gesture of greeting. “You’re welcome to call me Lom.”

Dean grabbed his hand, pumped it twice before ducking back behind the piano. “Dean Winchester.”

“Winchester? As in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company?”

“Um, maybe? Couldn’t tell ya.” Dean flinched as the window behind the piano blew out from something small and fast piercing the glass. Bullet, from the sounds of it. “Where are we?”

Lom shook shards from his dark, poorly-cut hair and coughed. “In a peck of trouble?”

“No, no. What _town_?”

“You must’ve gotten brushed in the noggin but good, Mr. Winchester. We are in Mongrel, Nevada. Specifically, at the Sweetwater Saloon. Or whatever will be left of it …”

_Christ. Not even in the same state, anymore. Could this make any less sense?_ Dean scanned the barroom purposefully, searching for anyone taller than the norm and probably shirtless. Possibly even bearing peaches.

The saloon wasn’t large but it was chock full of flailing arms and legs, furniture being knocked every which way, and the din was such that he couldn’t hear Sam calling, even if he wanted. And Dean wanted to hear his brother now with all his being.

“Lom. Have you seen another guy here, dressed kinda like me? Lotsa hair, stupid tall?”

“I cannot say that I have, Mr. Winchester. But then it is a tad difficult to tell one scrapper from the next, presently.” Lom winced as a shot glass bounced off the wall over his head. “Was he here with you?”

“Not sure.”

“Well. That is extraordinarily unhelpful.”

“Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

Lom pressed his lips tightly, his eyes wide behind the distortion of his glasses. “I take it you would not be adverse to availing yourself of the establishment’s back door?”

Dean still didn’t see Sam anywhere; maybe he got dropped outside. It was the best Dean could hope. “Sounds like a plan, Mr. McCallum.”

“Then I suggest you high-tail it this way.” Lom timed his sprint judiciously and took off like a jackrabbit, behind a wall of men in a stubborn grapple.

Dean scuttled close on his heels. Over his shoulder, he heard the distinct rise of voices. Great. He should’ve known it would only be a matter of time before the law showed up. Some patrons froze in their boots. Others with apparently more to lose went diving for the exits, obstructing Lom’s path.

Didn’t matter much anyway. By the time they got to the doorway, a thickset man with a frown and a badge had a pair of revolvers trained on the both of them. His expression was impassable; clearly he wasn’t going to take any of their crap unless they wanted to bicker with the business ends of his guns.

Dean did the smart thing and kept his cakehole firmly shut.

 

xXx

 

Come to find out, Lom McCallum was the piano player for the Sweetwater Saloon, recently transplanted from all points east of the Mississippi. The man was a bit vague with his reasons for relocating to Mongrel, and Dean was content to let it stay that way. He wasn’t exactly eager to justify his own appearance in Nevada, let alone in 1873, but they found themselves conversing guardedly in the same hot, airless jail cell. Three other men—though Dean would’ve labeled them more animal than man—shared their quarters and the reek was enough to singe nose hairs. The other three knew each other and hung together like a pack of vultures. Or flock. Or whatever the hell a group of vultures was called. Sam would’ve known.

He’d already scoped out the jailhouse, assessing his chances of escape. They weren’t bad, truth be told, except he was rapidly losing daylight. This wouldn’t have been an issue if he’d had the chance to get a better look at the layout of the joint before being thrown inside. 

And then there was the sheer number of civilians to contend with: the three sharing his cell, Piano Man, and another half-dozen behind bars on the other side of the room, not to mention the deputy on watch. He couldn’t trust a one of them, except maybe Lom, and that was a long shot at best. The deputy had already taken a few jabs at Dean’s attire and ‘pretty boy’ cleanliness, but Christ, let him jab. At least Dean didn’t smell like armpits and horseshit. 

“So what started the brawl at the Sweetwater? I missed that little detail.” Dean spoke in hushed tones to Lom, really just making small talk to keep his mind from wandering to myriad ominous places. 

Lom inclined his head slightly, gesturing to one of the prisoners in the cell, a ropey black-haired man with an easy smile. Suspiciously easy. “That’s Billy Harper. I would give him an especially wide berth, Mr. Winchester—”

“Dean.”

“Dean, then.” Lom dropped his gaze when Harper angled their way in vague curiosity. “He does not, as they say, play fair.” Lom’s voice had gotten so quiet Dean nearly missed the comment.

It seemed, however, Billy Harper didn’t need to hear Lom McCallum to know he was being gossiped about. Or perhaps he was simply arrogant enough to believe everyone talked about him—good, bad or otherwise. He unhitched his hands from the bars and wandered, as casual as a Sunday stroll, to an empty wooden bucket sitting maybe five feet from Dean’s boots. He began humming to himself, sounded like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Without a lick of self-consciousness, he unbuttoned his trousers, took out his dick and pissed into the pail. The stink was impressive. He looked over at Dean and Lom, smiled that easy smile—uneven teeth flashing behind a layer of coarse stubble and grime—and then splattered Dean’s boots with urine. There was nothing in his demeanor to indicate it was an accident, either.

Dean hopped back out of reflex, and Billy chortled. Lom had a hand on Dean’s arm before a single fist could be lifted.

Billy put himself back in his pants and took his sweet time returning to his corner of the cell, where the other two men where lounging and laughing bold-faced. Lom gripped Dean’s arm tighter and whispered, “No, sir. It would be most unwise to engage—”

Dean shook off Lom’s hand and fixed Billy with a pointed stare. “What? He’s just a dumb-ass horse fucker; if he wasn’t with his girlfriends, I’d feed him his own balls.” Said loud enough, of course, to be heard by the entire jail. The deputy watched with his feet on the desk, uninspired. Hoots came from the other holding tank and Billy hoisted eyebrows, feigning shock. The tallest of the three, a man who seemed to be painted in every shade of dull brown, elbowed Billy.

“Why, I do believe he has besmirched your fine reputation, Mr. Harper,” the lackey said into Billy’s ear.

“Has he now, Mr. Bales? I ain’t sure I should be frumped by such a Nancy-boy. He _did_ let me piss on his shoes—”

Dean grinned and Lom’s face dropped all color, nervous fingers plucking at Dean’s t-shirt. “Mr. Winchester— _Dean_ —I fear you might well be bitin’ off more than you can chew, here.”

“My mouth is bigger than it looks. And I’m hungry,” Dean said almost pleasantly, pulling against the feeble restraint and making a point to flex his chest; he was still better fed than these yokels and had no doubt he could whump them, bare-fisted. It would be … therapeutic. He wouldn’t even have to pull the bootknife he still felt pressing stiff against his ankle, missed by the deputy’s cursory pat-down.

One of the guys from the other cell, the same bruiser who had slugged Dean at the Sweetwater, clattered at the bars. “Hear that, Billy? He reckons _he’s_ got a big mouth …”

This spurred a round of mean laughter from Harper and his cronies. There was something odd behind the taunts, something conspicuously unsaid. Dean mulled over the ‘big mouth’ comment, a sour feeling oozing up from the bottom of his stomach.

Finally the deputy stood, planted his feet, settled his hands on the guns at either hip. His brow was thrown into shadow as the sun squatted on the horizon, dusk fast approaching. One flickering lantern sat on his desk, providing the only useful light which was hardly useful at all.

“That’ll be enough,” he slurred. Dean wasn’t sure whether the lawman was tired, indifferent, or half-drunk. With luck, all of the above, then maybe Dean could find occasion to jimmy the lock. Lom’s glasses might just do the trick, if bent the right way.

The room begrudgingly quieted and the men drifted into their companionable groups, eyes glittering at each other in wariness and threat. The night air, dry as dust, cooled quickly and mercifully lessened the stink in the jailhouse—or else Dean was just getting used to it. His belly complained, having long since digested the peaches, and it didn’t look as though the deputy was fetching dinner anytime soon. He might’ve considered nodding off—except Harper was still humming to himself, still prowling and smirking, and Dean didn’t dare shut his eyes.

Lom actually did fall asleep; this wasn’t his first spin in the pen for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he’d told Dean earlier. Fact was, there weren’t very many ‘right places’ in Mongrel. It was an ill-mannered, mischievous town, born of opportunity. Over the ridge, a vein of silver had been discovered and Mongrel had grown up around it to service the mine. The pretense of law kept a loose rein on crime, key word being “loose”.

Dean fell into the familiar role of guardian, as Lom’s head drooped and the piano player began to snore softly. The job felt, at once, comfortable and annoying. His worry for Sam nagged insistently, but he couldn’t do squat from inside a jail cell so Dean began the habitual weighing of allies and antagonists. If a window of opportunity showed up, he had to know whom to trust, whom to use, whom to knife in the back.

From overheard conversations, Dean figured out the guy with Harper was named Tanner Bales. Bales tended to use fifty-cent words and made like an educated man, but fat lot of good an education did in the middle of the Nevada desert. His clothes might’ve been fancier than Harper’s, had they not been just as worn and dusty. Their third wheel, a scrawny younger good-for-nothing—who looked almost shriveled, he was so thin—was often the butt of their jabs but he suffered the abuse eagerly. His colorless hair hung in long, greasy strings from under his hat, and he reminded Dean of a subway rat.

The deputy busied himself playing solitaire with a deck of cards, chugging from a flask and occasionally spitting onto the floor. Charming.

Nobody had much of anything to say as the night went on and the moon climbed, so when one of the prisoners spoke from the other cell, Dean startled.

“D-deputy. There’s somethin’ wrong with … with the Polak here. I think – I think he’s got the conniptions ‘er somethin’.” The man pressed his face to the bars and Dean took keen notice; he recognized the sharp edge of panic in the prisoner’s voice. A huge body hit the floor, writhing and choking in the other cell. The so-called Polak appeared to be in sincere distress. The lighting was shit and Dean couldn’t be 100% positive it wasn’t a ruse, but he was certain enough to pay close attention. Genuine or no, this could be just the distraction he needed. He nudged Lom awake.

Naturally, Harper and Bales showed interest too. Not that they’d been sleeping themselves, but now they jostled each other and pointed and slung arms over the scrawny, unnamed kid in almost-ownership.

“Lukasz?” The deputy grunted and stood, scrubbing a hand over his scalp.

The downed man was caught in a puddle of moonlight pouring through the small barred window on the east wall. His back was broad and hunched, shirt straining at the seams as he raked the floor, filthy straw caught between his fingers. Dean blinked and stared; the shoulder blades shifted. They shifted _wrong_. He wanted it to have been a trick of the shadows but, no. The bones, they were relocating; now he could hear the joints popping over the man’s gasps and spasms. Fabric tore, and Lukasz shuddered powerfully.

Lom moved to Dean’s side and sucked in breath. “Holy Mary, Mother of God …”

“I don’t think she’s gonna do us a damned bit of good right now,” Dean murmured.


	3. Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

 

Sam woke up with sand in his mouth. He was fairly certain he hadn’t put it there himself. 

For a muddled moment, he thought maybe he was so dehydrated, so wicked thirsty, his spit had dried up and turned to grit. But that was stupid, wasn’t it? He couldn’t be sure; his brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. It hurt like hell just to think, and Sam knew Hell.

There was a buzzing by his left ear, and under his nose was the pungent smell of fruit that’d been left out in the sun too long. Apples. Nope, peaches. Sam distantly recollected picking peaches, putting them in a pillowcase until it drooped heavy and strained at the seams. His mouth would have watered if it could’ve worked up the moisture. Wasn’t that last week? No, had to be today; he could still smell the peaches. Close by. And there was the buzzing again, the tickle of flies at his face, attracted by the stink of spoiling fruit.

Sam cracked his eyes open. The sun hovered fat, hot and low on the horizon. Setting, not rising, he suspected. The light was too golden. Morning light was cool; dusk was red and yellow and violet, turning to Prussian blue. The color of bruises. Sam knew bruises, too. He could feel a particularly spectacular one pulsing at his temple.

He dragged his knuckles through the dirt and tried to push up. The other arm wasn’t cooperating because he’d been lying on it and the limb had fallen asleep. Now it was beginning to burn with pins and needles. His skin burned, too. Somewhere along the line he’d lost his shirt and when his shoulder blades compressed, when he moved to stand, the flesh pinched tight and raw, making him hiss. To add insult to injury, the wind kicked up sharp and cool, sending gooseflesh over his stinging back.

He got his knees under himself, muscles rubbery, pausing for the world to quit pitching. He lumbered upright and planted his feet; even then, remaining vertical was a matter of abject tenacity. He locked his knees and swallowed back the familiar momentary wave of nausea that followed ‘teleportation’. Nerdy terminology, but he didn’t know what else to call it or what had actually happened, but clearly he was not in Utah anymore. Well, not in the abandoned orchard that had been Utah.

Desert expanded in all directions, an eternity of arid earth and stone ghosting into oncoming night at the edges of his vision. Great monolithic juts of wind-worn rock dotted the landscape like tombstones.

“Dean,” he choked out. Sam spat onto the ground and repeated his brother’s name, louder, stronger. But he knew he was alone, save a pair of turkey vultures that looked up from picking at a sack of what Sam presumed were the peaches. The birds glared at him with beady, baleful eyes. He was the stranger in their land; how nice of him to bring them a gift.

“Shit. Get lost.” Sam stumbled forward and swept his arms wide, cringing as the skin pulled. He might need those peaches to stay alive and the vultures could go eat carrion for all he cared. They launched away, kicking up more dust.

Sam dropped to his knees and began salvaging what he could of the fruit. It was then he realized the pillowcase was actually his t-shirt, and he remembered knotting the bottom to make a catch-all. But the shirt was going to have to be a shirt now; the sun was fast disappearing and this was desert: the parched air held no moisture and therefore, no heat. He was already starting to shiver and the sunburn didn’t help. He shook out the filthy t-shirt and carefully slipped it over his shoulders, dooming himself to stink like over-ripe fruit for the foreseeable future.

As it turned out, most of the peaches were ruined anyway. What little the birds hadn’t consumed was either teeming with flies, covered in dirt, or pulverized beyond edibility. Sam brushed off what he could and ate, then and there. It helped settle his stomach, despite the grind of sand between his teeth and the hollow worry of Dean’s absence.

With patience, his thoughts began to organize and clear, though he still felt like a wrung-out sponge. He took stock of his resources, which wasn’t a particularly heartening exercise. No matter which direction he turned, his cell phone registered nothing. No service.

No kidding.

He had a Bic lighter, a money clip with a sad thin layer of folded bills pinched in its jaws, the paperback he’d been reading— _The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest_ —tucked into a back pocket, a Swiss Army knife, a Smartphone that didn’t seem particularly smart at this moment, and a small plastic pill bottle of salt. At least he had plenty of things to burn and a corkscrew, just in case he happened upon a nice bottle of merlot.

Sam started walking. If he couldn’t find Dean, he had to find shelter. The unforgiving earth produced equally ruthless vegetation, and it only took one false step into a copse of squat cactus to remind him to watch his footing more carefully. The spines needled through his socks and forced him to stop and pick them out for a good ten minutes. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry to get somewhere, since he didn’t know where he was going, but all the unanswered questions stuck in his craw and made him compulsively push forward, into the new and unknown.

After what had to be several miles of the same vista, Sam concluded there was nothing new and unknown. Or if there was, it was well hidden. The piercing silence was a vast thing, almost alien to modern man. No ambient traffic sounds or thrum of humanity or jet trails in the sky. The moon couldn’t get any fuller, and it lit the landscape with cruel brilliance. Sam treaded a course from rock formation to rock formation. He climbed up on a massive boulder to get a better view of the land and call again for Dean, and at one point, swore he saw something glowing on the horizon. He prayed it was a town or a camp, not just wishful thinking tricking his eyes into seeing things that weren’t there. He’d had quite enough of hallucinating in this lifetime. Though, after Lucifer’s running commentary on every fucking aspect of Sam’s tragic existence, the quiet of the desert was practically a vacuum, unsettling in the opposite way.

The stars drifted overhead, indicating Sam was heading north. His feet were beginning to drag, catching on corners of rocks, scrubby tufts of flora and sometimes, thin air. He had long since passed the point of hunger—now it was just a dull, bilious ache in his middle—but he was desperately thirsty. And God, he was cold. Something howled far off in the aether, and while Sam wanted it to be a wolf, he couldn’t call it that with much certainty. The sound was too human. He’d read somewhere that coyote or fox could sound human, but he also knew monsters could too. Wendigo were especially crafty mimics, and don’t even get him started on skinwalkers.

The third time he nearly face-planted into the earth, Sam decided to call it a night before he knocked out his own front teeth. He headed toward a substantial outcropping of stones and when he got close, he was guardedly encouraged to find a gap in the cleavage of two giant boulders and through that gap, a cave. It was deep and narrow, and he just barely fit through the opening without leaving some of his blistered skin behind.

The cave widened into a larger passage, though still too low for Sam to stand upright. He kept his hand to one wall, creeping forward as the thinnest ribbon of moonlight trickled through the dark. It was cramped and dotted with bats, but it was shelter and it finally dead-ended into a bulbous space almost six feet tall, ten feet wide. It would have to suffice as Sam’s dive motel for what remained of the night.

He pulled out his phone and flipped on the handy flashlight app. The device provided enough light to ensure he wasn’t sharing the cave with dangerous critters and allowed him to start a small fire with Chapter One of _The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest_ and a small collection of dead plant material. Once the chill had been chased away, Sam’s camp was almost cozy. Guano notwithstanding.

It was so damned quiet. The small fire managed to crackle and spit occasionally, but silence overwhelmed it and not even the echoes off the cave walls stood a chance. Sam felt smothered and dizzy and his nose stung from the unvented smoke. He settled carefully against one wall, at a smooth spot, struggling in vain to find comfort. Exhaustion tugged at his eyelids but he managed to set the alarm on his watch. Five hours rest, and then he had to keep moving while it was cool.

He wondered about Dean, where he was, if he was making his way through the desert too. If he was still in Utah, bedded down for the night in a derelict house, staring at the walls, sleepless. If he’d found a liquor store the Leviathan hadn’t touched and was drunk into oblivion.

Mostly, he just missed him. And wondered.


	4. Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

 

No one knew what was going on but Dean, and even he was stunned silent. He’d seen skinwalkers drop their hide into piles of snotty matter and hair, seen corpses move in ways bodies really shouldn’t, but this was … this was a man shedding his humanity and becoming a mindless, rabid _thing_ , made of muscle and magic and hate, right before his eyes.

The man’s torso churned and expanded to the sound of flesh stretching, creaking. His wails lowered into guttural snarls and the clothing split into shreds, away from the sheer bulk of what he was becoming.

And what the _fuck_ was he becoming? Dean’s brain raced through its mental tome of monsters and there was simply nothing that matched this description. His best guess was werewolf, so that would have to work as a starting point. But this hairy-scary was far unlike any werewolf he’d hunted before.

The men in the far cell pressed themselves against the bars and screamed. They begged for release but the deputy wouldn’t come within ten feet of the locked door. He had taken the keys off his belt, however, and was gripping them in a trembling fist. He’d also pissed himself, a dark stain spreading from the crotch of his trousers.

Metal rattled and wood groaned, but the cell held firm. Dean felt Lom quivering beside him, and one glance confirmed the piano man was a heartbeat away from passing out.

The probable werewolf made a low noise in its throat that almost sounded like amusement, and raised itself up to stand on twisted hind legs, newly-formed eartips brushing the ceiling. Hair—stiff, mangy and thickening—was visibly sprouting from what remained of its human flesh and Dean saw the flash of claws, each as big as his thumb, swipe at one of the screaming men. In a spray of red, the screaming stopped. 

That was bad enough, but what bothered Dean further was the man who had come up behind the creature, the same guy who’d busted Dean’s nose when he’d first timewarped into Nevada. The asshole wasn’t terrified or fixing to crack the werewolf upside the head with a piss bucket. He was cupping his hands in the beam of moonlight, like it was a mountain stream. He began trembling and breathing rough. And then he grinned with a mouth full of long, sharp, yellowed teeth.

“Oh, _hell_ no.” Dean made a snap decision. “Open the doors,” he yelled at the deputy, but the man stumbled into his desk, almost toppling the lantern. “Open the God-damned doors!”

“Open the doors, Seth!” Lom pleaded, trying to be brave and the fact he spoke at all boded well for his untested courage.

Deputy Seth’s glassy-eyed gaze skittered over to Lom and he threw the keys. They jangled across the floor, stopping short of the cell, and then he ran. He bolted out of the jail like his ass was on fire.

Dean lunged his arm through the bars but his bicep stopped him cold, the ring of iron keys a good foot out of reach. He strained until his already battered face throbbed and the bars pressed bruises into his arm. No dice. Shitty time to be well-muscled. Across the room, men were still screaming and Dean smelled the cloying odor of blood and ammonia in the air. His throat tightened with the urge to vomit. Hissing, he pulled back and quickly rolled the ache out of his shoulder. He shot a glare to Harper and his gang of two.

“Please tell me one of you fucknuts have got … uh …”

They were all staring at him with eyes that glimmered gold as though caught in the headlights of a truck. Reflective. Like wolves.

Dean snapped his bootknife free of its ankle sheath and prepared to be knee-deep in bad luck.

He figured from observation that direct moonlight was an accelerant. Since the sole pair of windows in the joint was on the opposite wall, he had time before the other infected men—though he definitely balked at the notion that they were human any longer—morphed into killing machines.

Without taking his eyes off of Harper and company, he reached back and grabbed Lom by his thread-bare shirt, pulling him forward. A fleeting look confirmed that Lom was still just a regular joe, albeit on the verge of full-blown panic.

“Do you have anything silver on you, anything at all?” Dean said, low and fast.

Lom tore at his collar and pulled free a chain with a crude charm on the end. St. Jude. Funny.

“That’s it?”

Lom bobbled his head.

“Awesome.” Dean sniped. “Get the keys. I’ll buy us time.” He bounced the weight of the knife in his palm and forced himself to push the sound of men dying in the other cell out of his mind.

Harper leered at Dean and his knife. He didn’t look the least bit concerned; he looked twitchy and eager, eyes the color of doubloons and getting lighter by the second. “Dandy pigsticker,” he lisped, distorting mouth making speech slippery.

“Come get you some,” Dean taunted.

Harper, coward that he was, shoved the nameless kid forward into range and Dean didn’t waste the opportunity. The kid was off-balance and scratching at his own skin; Dean sliced without discretion. The blade caught Nameless under the chin and it sizzled when the silver plating touched the magic in the werewolf.

Harper and Bales had the smarts to back off. The kid shrieked, wild-eyed. Blood fountained out of the gap in his throat, through clutching fingers. He made gurgling noises and red bubbled bright over his lips. Dean grabbed a fistful of greasy hair and forced him onto his back, pinning him to the floor with a knee to his bony chest. The knife clutched in both hands, Dean plunged it into Nameless’ heart. He felt ribs snap. The glow fell out of the kid’s stare like a streetlight flickering dark.

Dean yanked the knife out of the body and leveled the dripping blade at Harper and Bales. “Lom … keys …”

“Al-almost!” Lom sounded breathless and Dean figured the piano man had been lanky enough to squeeze more of his arm through the bars. He heard the clink of metal and the scramble of boots.

Harper snarled, incapable of forming words any longer, his shoulders beginning to lump and roll on their own accord. Bales was already tearing at his coat, his face some smeary combination of beast and man. Both were markedly filling the space with muscle and the powerful stink of dog.

Swaying the knife and balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, Dean was readying for the next volley of stupid when the whole building rocked. Lom gasped and fumbled more desperately with the keys in the lock. The fully formed werewolves in the other cell were launching themselves at the bars. Prison, circa 1870, was not in any way prepared to contain giant, man-eating, pissed-off fleabags.

Another slam, and mortar flew in bits across the jail. Wood splintered. Dust rained down from the roof. Bales howled and the pitch made Dean’s skin prickle.

The fiend that had been Harper shook itself, slavering. As Lom flung open the cell door, the jail house careened one last time and the other cell exploded outwards, ruined. The force sent the deputy’s lamp crashing off the desk; it struck the floor, kerosene splashing wide and fire devouring the dry wood.

The werewolves flinched away from the flames, almost as one unit, and this gave Dean and Lom the opening to run like madmen.

And run, they did.


	5. Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE 

 

The wind moaned and Sam moaned along with it, though he didn’t realize he was making a sound until he stopped. He opened his eyes. A flash of panic hit when he couldn’t see a damned anything and he struggled to sit upright, groggy and aching, his lips cracked dry.

He’d been dreaming and the remnants of it tangled like smoke in his hair. There were peaches and the fruit grew teeth like barbs that stuck in his skin and they wriggled and turned into burrowing worms and Jesus, this was messed up. Sam touched his lip with a quivering finger and it came back wet, the blood turned almost black in the pale light of encroaching dawn. His wristwatch started beeping, confirming the early hour, unbearably loud in the near-silence.

Cave, thirst, alone, Dean? He couldn’t finish a single thought before another crowded in.

He fumbled his alarm off and pulled himself up from the hard ground. His shirt stuck to the leaking blisters on his back; how he’d managed to avoid getting sun-poisoned was something of a small miracle. If not for his fevered skin, the cold in the cave would’ve sunk deep into his bones. As it was, he trembled numbly and went about the familiar process of breaking camp, ignoring the reawakened hunger pangs and tender skin. He kicked dirt onto the already-dead fire, stuck the paperback in his pocket again, and collected up his meager belongings. He missed brushing his teeth almost as much as the simple luxury of having water to spit.

Sam emerged from the cave’s mouth, noting a razor of weak pink on the edge of the land. The wind kicked up and he shivered harder, but he forced himself to focus on the fact that shivering was preferable to sweating under these circumstances. He took a moment to piss; the urine was still normal in color, not dark from the lack of fluids. That was something, at least.

He was putting himself back in his jeans, scanning the horizon, when his eyes caught on a pinprick of orange. Trailing from it was a tendril of dark cloud. It was still a far piece away, but to see it from this distance meant it was a good-sized fire. More importantly, it meant civilization. So he hadn’t been imagining things yesterday after all. 

With a great draw of breath, Sam began walking toward it.

Those few hours of shut-eye, while hardly providing proper rest, did manage to improve his morale. He could appreciate how undeniably beautiful, _surreal_ , the land was. Endless and uncluttered, it began in the ominous colors of night, surrendering those deep tones to lighter, more delicate pastels as Sam hiked on. The packed earth was merciless on the soles of his feet but at least it was stable and not shifting in tricky drifts, where a person could easily break an ankle. Staying vertical was challenging enough without the sand working against you. What were a few more blisters, anyway?

Periodically, he stopped, collected rocks and arranged large arrows on the ground in case someone else happened along this fateful way, or if a dust storm kicked up and Sam got turned around, the markers would help him regain his bearings. As much as it galled him to admit it, Dean had the far better sense of direction.

As the sun breached the horizon and the air warmed, Sam began to notice birds. At the orchard he’d hated seeing the things, damned harbingers of death. But here in the desert, where there were birds, there was water. The location of the birds seemed to correlate to the fire in the distance—still burning, still drawing closer—but still so very far away. The smoke became white as day filled the sky. Everything was starting to brighten and bleach. Sam resorted to pulling off his shirt and fashioning a sort of veil to keep the heat away from his head and the worst of his shoulders. He doggedly followed the beacon of smoke and the drift of large-winged birds circling overhead.

Occasional bouts of wooziness began flaring up after an hour, maybe three; he’d lost all judgment of time and the numbers on his watch swam too fast to read. Sam pinned it on the blood-boiling heat and lack of water. His hunger had dulled back to an ache, annoying but ignorable. He could not, however, pretend he wasn’t thirsty. No amount of pugnacious willpower would trump dehydration.

He wasn’t certain he was sweating any more, either. It was impossible to tell for all the grime that kicked up and caked on his skin, leeching away whatever sweat he might’ve been producing.

At several points his attention wandered, vision blurring against the harsh glare of pale sand and wind-shorn rock formations, and he stumbled to his knees, his palms searing against the ground. _Was this what it felt like to be burned alive? Like mothers, like fiancées?_ Sam blinked the grime from his eyes and put a hand to his belly, found it hollow but whole. He hauled back up and kept walking, moving on auto-pilot, trudging, one foot dragging after the other until he was tumbling down again.

He was going to have to stop as soon as he found a wedge of shadow to rest in. Or sooner, if his legs kept giving out and if the whispers he heard on the wind started turning into phantom voices. It was like music, the wind, almost-birdsong that sporadically formed words because Sam was used to hearing things— _beings_ —talking to him from nowhere. Desperately, he hoped it was birds, or maybe the papery flutter of wings. Sam wondered if this meant angels were watching out for him, not birds at all. Angels with holy water to slake his thirst. Or break his brain.

_Stop it, don’t be stupid, Winchester, the angels are crazy. Every last fucking one. And so are you if you think anyone’s gonna look out for you in the middle of No Man’s Land. If your brother can’t find you, nobody can._

Sam laughed to himself and it sounded like a crow cawing. He could swear he saw a couch up there, ahead on the left thirty feet or so, behind a curtain of wavy heat. Bobby’s couch? Whatever it was, it was big enough to provide shade and someplace to hide from the remains of the day. He shambled forward, saw pillows, great dusky green pillows with dark polka dots; but when did Bobby’s couch turn green?

_It isn’t green, you idjit._

“Bobby? No, not Bobby. Bobby’s dead.”

_Snap to it, boy. My couch is red. Dark red like old blood—_

“Not … wait. Not your couch?”

_Bingo. Always knew college did ya some good._

Sam was inches from falling onto the supposed couch, reckless for its musty smell and the puff of dust that rose from the sagging cushions, when he stopped himself and reared back. Scraping a hand across his brow, he blinked and the mirage became an outcropping of rocks curled around an enormous bed of prickly pear cacti.

“That woulda left a mark.” Sam almost laughed but it wasn’t funny. In his own defense, it did manage to look like a big couch if you squinted really hard.

Sam’d had prickly pear jelly when he’d lived in Arizona all those years ago. Much of the plant was edible, and this one still bore a few sad fruit.

Inspired, he pawed into his pocket and pulled out the Swiss army knife, extending the largest blade. Sam used a rock to hammer back a section of spiked paddles before managing to cut free one purple bulb, speared on the end of the knife. He narrowed eyes at the thing which was likewise pincushioned with smaller barbs. _Smash it,_ a voice chirped in his mind, but the fruit was only the size of a plum; there would be too much loss. He turned out his pockets onto the ground and poked through the items with his left hand, the precious fruit held high and away from the dirt.

Insight struck like the voice of God, if He even existed anymore. Sam snatched up his Bic lighter, crawled over to the shady side of the rocks opposite the cactus, and began roasting the outside of the fruit with flame. He didn’t care if it took the lighter’s whole damn store of fuel, he was going to get to the life-saving middle of the berry. Finally, he could strip off the outer skin without puncturing his fingers, and he cradled the leaking mess in his palm with the greatest care. He couldn’t spare a single drop of the bright pink juice, nor did he want it coated in sand. It was better than any peach and his lips came away stained and sticky. He cut another bulb free and repeated the process.

Sam absently remembered, from Plant Biology 101, the name of those annoying hair-like bristles that shed off and embedded into his skin. ‘Glochids.’ Exhausted and fingertips sore, he curled up in the scant shade of the rocks and fell, quite suddenly, asleep.

 

xXx

 

Movement, curling around his belly, tickled Sam awake. Sleep-muddled, Sam brushed at it before enough cognizance returned to remind him that when he’d fallen asleep, he’d been alone. Despite a sluggish hit of alarm, he still didn’t have the energy to snap to it, which proved to be a blessing in disguise. He sat up slowly and blinked as the rattlesnake, which had sidled up to Sam’s body heat, zig-zagged away across the cooling desert, its shadow dark and long in the hour of sunset.

He unballed his shirt, willfully ignoring how much it stunk, and put it back on. The blisters on his back split open yet again but he was numb to the pain. Almost didn’t care any more.

Sam lurched to his feet and looked towards the place he’d last seen the fire and smoke. It was still there but seemed fainter, ebbing. After a quick scan of the terrain, it remained his only possibility of human habitation. He clung to it like a drowning man.

He took a moment to shake out his socks, prod with resignation at his tender feet and empty his boots of pebbles, then resumed his pilgrimage to the beacon on the edge of the land.

Night fell fast and Sam wrapped arms around himself, rubbing away the gooseflesh. The moon was still full and enormous in the sky, lighting his way. Tonight, the desert was not as quiet. It felt alive. The wind pushed the sand restlessly and nightbird song followed in its wake, often sounding far too much like a woman’s cries for Sam’s comfort.

It didn’t help that he could hear his own heartbeat machine-gunning in his ears, and he was sure he was starting to run a fever.

_Thanks, insult. Go ahead, add to my injury._

After the passage of an uncertain chunk of time, Sam was also pretty certain he was being followed. Something moved along the rises of hill, obscured by big dry tangles of weed and stone outcroppings. It wasn’t just a wayward rattlesnake, either. It was far bigger than a fox, and fast. Sam caught a flash of glowing eyes, then they were gone. Or maybe they hadn’t been there at all. He couldn’t trust his own compromised senses but he trusted his instincts. Wolf, maybe? But didn’t they almost always run in packs? It seemed to be a solitary creature, from what he could guess. Mountain lion? Hell, that was assuming a lot; he might not even be in the United States anymore. The stars looked familiar, but …

Sam drew out his pocketknife, snicked open the blade. It was still stained with cactus juice. He was in the broad wide open and when he tried to move towards cover, the shadows churled again. It was drawing closer, whatever it was, and the nightbirds had stopped singing. The wind shifted and Sam smelled something musky and sour. Distantly familiar.

“Shit, what are you,” he mumbled, whirling when movement darted past the corner of his vision. He swept aside his greasy hair and shook off the dizzying buzz of fear. “Come on, you son of a bitch, show yourself.”

The thing chuffed: part snarl, part chuckle.

Sam’s blade flashed in the moonlight and a wall of thick dirty fur charged over the bluff, immense enough to be a half-dozen wolves combined. It was black and Sam saw a long snout, jaws cracking open in a brazen show of tongue and teeth. He swiped the pocketknife at the beast’s face and only managed to hit a limb, but the blade stuck like a toothpick in the mass of muscle and hair. Made about as much impact, too.

Werewolf. Biggest fucking werewolf Sam had seen in his entire life. He just prayed it wasn’t the last thing he ever saw.

It bayed, and a fresh jolt of panic shot up Sam’s spine. He threw himself backwards as claws blew past his face, just barely nicking his cheekbone. His ass hit the ground hard, knocking the air clean out of his lungs.

The monster snapped its jowls and Sam flipped himself to his hands and knees, shoving off in a frantic sprint but the creature got a fistful of shirt. It stopped him cold. The collar of his t-shirt cut into his throat and the cloth started to rip. Sam gritted his teeth and strained, but he didn’t have nearly enough strength. He was being pulled in, felt the werewolf’s hot fetid breath, stinking of rotten meat, on the back of his neck. It exhaled, then slowly enclosed Sam’s entire left shoulder with its massive maw. Playing with its food.

Sam froze. He heard a choked sound come from his throat. The fangs pressed until skin popped. The choke became a guttural scream and the crushing pain made Sam’s knees give. He was being held aloft by the spears of tooth in his shoulder; his chest warmed with the spill of his own blood. As the dark closed in and Sam hung, helpless, in the werewolf’s mouth, there was a sharp boom, a big twitch. And then nothing.


	6. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

 

Dean and Lom skulked through the dark town like stray cats. They kept to the shadows and moved without speaking. Lom lead the way, promising he had a place for them to hide and since Dean didn’t know the town, he reluctantly deferred to the piano man’s resources. It was disconcerting following someone who wasn’t his brother and Lom sure as hell wasn’t Sam: the man was scrambly and awkward but at least he knew the lay of the land. His spectacles glinted, weird flashes like some of the monsters they hunted, and it kept making Dean’s heart jump.

They dodged every horse and passer-by or, failing that, forced a casual stroll to the next pool of shadows. The unpaved streets felt conspicuously busy. It could’ve been Dean’s painful hope to remain unnoticed, but probably the bloodbath at the jail was drawing more folks than might normally be out this time of night.

_Christ, stay inside, you fools,_ Dean couldn’t help but pray.

Lom paused at the corner of a big two-storey building. It was piecemealed together from a bunch of other buildings, the wood siding a puzzle of a dozen different textures, and some of windows were sheeted in red-colored glass. He picked up a pebble from the street and plunked it at a particular window—not a red one but a pane just adjacent.

“Trudy!” he hissed, throwing a second stone. Dean winced and kept an eye out for nosy neighbors. Or werewolves, whichever came first.

A small outline appeared in the window, moving closer to expose a petite, dark-haired woman, barely more than a girl. Her expression turned bothered and she waved a hand. Lom nodded and tugged Dean around the corner to a door he hadn’t even noticed before. Light footfalls came from inside before the door cracked open.

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t as young as Dean had first guessed, with her wry lips and sun-weathered skin. She wore some sort of corset around her middle that pinched in at the waist and boosted her tits up into the thin fabric of a blouse, pointedly advertising her profession. She had a mess of brunette curls and dark eyes that stung like hornets.

“Well. If you’re here for a fuck, Columbus, you’re not getting it for free.” _This time_. Dean recognized the flash of angry affection directed at Lom. Knew it well; such a look had been aimed at Dean on more than a few occasions throughout his life, from various women he’d … known.

Lom shuffled from foot to foot. “I am sorry, Trudy. But can we—”

“Who is this ‘we’?” Her glare narrowed and shot to Dean’s battered face.

“Dean Winchester, ma’am.” Dean attempted his patented ‘lady killer’ smile but it fell dead in the water and hurt like hell.

“Is that supposed to mean one damn to me? You come here, belly to the brush, on the coattails of this bastard and expect niceties?”

“Uh, excuse me?”

Showing his empty palms, Lom pressed forward and rescued Dean from further barbs. “Trudy, we’ve just come from the jail and I have had a most appalling evening. Please. If you could let us in for an hour, maybe two …”

“The jail?” Her pissiness eased a touch. “I caught sight of the blaze all the way from my window. What ruination have you gotten yourself into, Lom?”

Dean cleared his throat.

Lom fidgeted. “If you’ll let us in, I can tell you one hell of a story and had I not lived it, I’d have feared I dreamt it. On my mother’s grave, I swear to you.”

“You’d best not be bringing your fucking mother into this. Nor the grave.” The whore huffed and stepped aside, eyeing them both as they passed.

The foyer opened directly onto an ill-lit staircase and she lead the way up, the wood complaining under their collective weight. Dean faltered on the narrow steps. He was exhausted and he knew once he sat down, he wasn’t getting up again unless forced. They traveled a short hallway that was lit by smudged kerosene sconces, closed doors lining either side like a shitty hotel—which wasn’t far from the truth if that hotel included a particular type of room service. Sounds issued from the passing doors that validated any suspicion Dean might’ve had about the place.

She ushered the men into her boudoir, with its moth-eaten lace curtains and unmade bed and cloying stink of lavender, latching the door behind. Lom immediately sank onto the bed and removed his glasses, swiping a hand across his brow. His face was the same color as the dingy sheets. Dean made the hygienic decision to sit in a chair by the window, easing down and looking out into the streets below. There were too damned many dark corners and sheltered porches. If something wanted to lose itself in shadow, it could. Easily.

Their hostess pulled a bottle from a drawer and blew dust from a trio of shot glasses. “You drink, Mr. Winchester?”

“God, yes,” Dean said.

Lom wiped his palms on his trousers and exhaled. “I do appreciate this, Trudy. More than you—”

She shoved a drink into his hand. “Don’t thank me, just start talkin’.”

Normally, Dean disapproved of enlightening the masses. No one wanted to believe in monsters. No one wanted to fear the unrecognizable things that teemed after sundown and flickered past the corner of your eye and lived—if they were alive at all—by a different set of rules known only to the nightmares themselves. The moment that Sammy, with his big heathery eyes and smart mouth, had cornered Dean about Dad’s journal and all the inconsistencies in what he saw between their lives and those of the rest of the world, Dean’s heart had sunk into his belly. It might be there still. Innocence: banished by the wit of an eight-year-old too smart for his own good.

Dean simply gave Lom a nod.

The piano player set his spectacles back on his nose, fiddled with the wire arms until they tucked properly behind his ears, and took a gulp of whiskey. “You know those nights, Trudy, when we’d hear something moan north of town, from the badlands, over the foothills? And it’d send a chill up your spine but you’d just say ‘Oh, a goose walked over my grave,’ and we figured it was only a coyote cryin’, or the Ute trying to spook folks away from the mines?” Lom stared at his drink and Trudy shifted, impatient. “It’s nothing that easy. The tall tales, the ghost stories the old timers tell, well, they are not … _tales_. On this evening and before my very eyes, I have seen men become … become beasts as I’ve never witnessed before. Never so much as imagined.” Lom’s hands were shaking.

Trudy curled her lip in clear disbelief, shot a glance to Dean.

“Hey, don’t give me that poop-face. It is what it is, sister,” he chuckled humorlessly.

“You two take me for a fool?” She jabbed a finger in no one’s direction, in particular. Just jabbed.

Lom stood, arms flung wide—a gesture Sam often made and it stung to see—spilling rot-gut on the sheets and adding to the stains. “Do _you_ take me for a superstitious redneck? Why would I risk looking like a danged sap, telling you this? I saw Lukasz Kluj _change._ His bones broke and he became furred over the whole of his body and I do not know what he is now, but he is most assuredly not human. No. Not in any sense we claim.” Lom’s cheeks rushed with color, sweat staining the pits of his shirt even though the night had gotten brisk and the wind was picking up. Felt like something waiting to happen. Some kind of horrible expectancy …

“Sit down before you have a brain fit,” Trudy scowled but her voice held an edge of doubt. “Lukasz?”

“Yes. And Billy Harper, Tanner Bales and that youngster that used to hang along with them until Mr. Winchester saw to his timely dispatch.”

“Humph. No great loss.”

“Yes, but now, it’s so _so_ much worse. There are others ...”

“I always knew Harper was a prick. Do you know he gave me the cl—”

Dean jumped in at that point. “So, yeah, we’re talking werewolves here.”

“And why, exactly, do you think I need to be a part of this stupidity?” she snapped right back.

“Because you do _not_ want these fuckers running around your town, either eating folks or making adorable new werewolves out of the survivors. And—” Dean took a wince-inducing swallow from his glass “—I have a brother out there somewhere. Gotta find him.”

Trudy pinched her mouth into an unyielding line and poured herself another shot. She crossed the room to the window, both Dean and Lom following her movements with their eyes as though she held the key to their entire survival. She probably didn’t, but Dean’s options were tight and at this point; he couldn’t afford to let any stone go unturned. His head was swimming and his belly was empty and he needed one damned thing to break in his direction.

“You are so full of shit,” she mumbled.

Dean grinned, hearing the give in her voice. “And your whiskey sucks.”

Trudy threw back the drink defiantly. “Fine. What do you jackasses need?”

 

xXx

 

That night, Trudy brought them up smoked meat, cheese and rock-hard biscuits, and Dean had never appreciated a meal as much as he did in that moment. They ate at the small table, finished her whiskey, and talked in hushed voices about ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties. Lom listened with rapt attention; he’d borne witness to the truth and it was rocking his tiny world. He didn’t crumble, though. It took a certain steel, or desperation or idiocy, to venture this far out West, and Mongrel was not a town for the delicate flower. Trudy threw a pile of blankets on the floor for Dean and allowed Lom to share her bed.

She made quite certain to latch the windows and lock the door tight.

Despite his worry for Sam, Dean dropped into unconsciousness and slept the sleep of the dead. He didn’t stir until anemic dawn leaked through the curtains and a rooster or five began crowing. He lay there aching for a while, too stiff to budge with more than slow, stilted movements. The floor was cold but the blankets, thick and warm. Trudy was already awake and returning to the room; she looked somehow less intimidating by the light of morning. Tinier, plainer. She stood over Dean and dropped a clean shirt onto his chest.

“There’s water in the basin if you feel like washin’. I highly suggest it.” Then she wandered to the bed and unceremoniously roused Lom by twisting his nipple. Dean counted his blessings.

The trio took breakfast at a small public kitchen, since the Sweetwater was still a disaster from the previous day’s ‘celebration’ and according to Trudy, Harper wasn’t welcomed at this particular eatery. As Dean sat at the table, inhaling the aroma of eggs and sourdough and fried venison, as he sipped the powerfully strong coffee and picked grounds off his tongue, he didn’t miss the backnote of vinegar one bit. The Leviathans weren’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. It was the second best meal he’d eaten in as many months.

Lom sawed at his meat with a dull knife. “I’m a tad … overwhelmed, I confess. I can likely get you a gun but those—” he dropped his voice to a stage whisper, “—those _beasts_ would not be brought down by a bullet, I fear.”

Ah, but then there was the pesky werewolf problem. “Get me a shotgun and I’ll show you how to make silver buckshot. Ain’t hard,” Dean said between mouthfuls. “Good thing we’re right by a mine, hmm? Don’t think we’ll have time to pour bullets but if we can get the dogs down and squirming with the buckshot, we can take off their heads and then set their hairy asses on fire.” 

Trudy snorted. “My, but you make it sound so easy.”

“You’re right; it’s not. These bitches are bigger than I’ve seen before. And I don’t know how full the moon has to be to trigger their little costume change. Hell, they might not even shift tonight but we can’t take that chance.”

“I can figure out where Harper’s gotten to,” she told them. “Bales ought to be right on Harper’s backside. Lukasz has a wag-tail at The Calico Cat and she’ll talk for a bottle of cheap corn liquor. Who else at the jail got a fur coat last night?”

“O’Grady. Reese. The others, I don’t know,” Lom said. “Not certain any of them made it free of the fire, though.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes until Lom wagged his fork, a considering look on his face. “You know who might know a thing or two?”

Dean arched his brows in question over the rim of a coffee mug.

“The White Witch.”

This got an immediate, and not wholly positive, reaction from Trudy. “Don’t be a starin’ fool, Columbus McCallum.”

Lom shrugged, shrinking back in his chair.

“Whoa, wait, who?” Dean demanded.

“The White Witch.” Lom kept half an eye on Trudy like she might smack him for repeating the name. He continued even when her expression thinned with warning. “I think she lives about a day’s travel out of town. I see her every now and again, riding in on her big black horse to visit the mercantile. Keeps to herself mostly, but once in a while she visits folks. Folks who’re in a bad way. Sometimes she helps.”

Trudy grumbled under her breath, “And sometimes … she don’t.”

“What happens when she doesn’t help?” Dean _had_ to know.

Lom and Trudy exchanged loaded glances; Lom swiped at his mouth with a napkin before speaking.

“This spring past, old Flora Meeks started talking to her husband again. Now, this wouldn’t have caused a stir if the mister Meeks hadn’t already been deceased for nigh upon a month. We just assumed it was the years making her infirm but when the doc went out to check on her one Sunday evening—bring her a liniment to ease her arthritis—he said he saw something. Spooked him clean out of his wits and he wouldn’t go back nor talk about it. The Witch rode in the next day, went to Mrs. Meeks’s home and paid her a visit.” Lom leaned forward conspiratorially. “By Wednesday, the widow was dead. No one’s saying it was the Witch, but no ones saying it wasn’t, either. They ended up burning the Meeks homestead because people kept hearing conversations when there shouldn’t have been a one, the place being empty and all.”

Dean nodded. Sounded like a fairly routine haunting, which of course wasn’t the least bit routine to the people of Mongrel. It did, however, pique his curiosity something fierce. “Why do they call her the White Witch, anyway?”

“Her hair, it’s white as salt.”

Interesting, but not important. “No, man, why do they call her a _witch_?”

“Anyone who hobnobs with the Paiute the way she does has earned the name,” Trudy stated with dour certainty.

Lom fretted like he had something else to say but he kept his mouth shut.

“All righty then.” Maybe once they were out from under Trudy’s stink-eye, Lom would spill it. Dean wadded his napkin, threw it on an empty plate, and rolled up the sleeves of his borrowed shirt. “Where do we find this White Witch?”

xXx

 

No one knew for certain where the witch lived; she seemed to turn up at random intervals—unless you knew what you were looking for. Dean suspected if he had the luxury of the internet, he could coordinate her appearance with strange goings-on. Or Sam could, at any rate, but since he had access to neither a computer or his brother, he and Lom began at the last home she’d visited two weeks ago. A nice family, from all outward signs. Rev. Chivington had come from back east with his wife and daughter in an attempt to bring old-time religion to the miners and savages. _Good luck, there,_ Dean had thought derisively. Rev. Chivington seemed to be widely tolerated, though, so perhaps his particular brand of hellfire and brimstone was strongly tempered with common sense and patience. They lived in a modest house behind an unnamed chapel, and someone had attempted to plant flowers around the short stone walk. The siding was whitewashed, a double-swing hung from chains on the small porch, and honest-to-God, there was a fruit pie cooling in the window.

Trudy wasn’t with them—she had ‘business’ to address—so the men brushed the dust off their shoulders and rapped on the Chivingtons’ door. The missus answered with a wary smile and Lom removed his hat, respectfully.

“Mrs. Chivington?” Dean smiled in return, showing just the right amount of tooth. “My name is Dean Winchester. I … I need your help, ma’am.”

Being a preacher’s wife, she was programmed to never turn away a soul in need; Dean was well aware of this. He opened his expression wide and worked the sort of softness in his eyes he’d seen Sammy milk a million times. 

“How can I help you, gentlemen?” She didn’t seem surprised that Dean knew her name. She was, after all, the town preacher’s wife.

“Ma’am, I’m looking for the White Witch; I heard she—”

Mrs. Chivington’s expression flipped so quickly, Dean almost felt the breeze of its passing. “I don’t know what you heard, Mr. Winchester, but I am not in a position to discuss her.”

“Wait, please—”

“I’m sorry.”

The door started to close but Dean pressed a palm to it and the preacher’s wife turned not just displeased, but cold enough to freeze Hell. He heard Lom behind him, drawing in breath.

He had to think fast, abandoning the puppy dog eyes which he sucked at, anyways. “Lady, I know you’ve seen things you can’t explain and this White Witch is in the middle of it but, God, I need your help. _Her_ help. I don’t think you’re crazy; sometimes really shitty—I mean _awful_ —things happen to good people and look, I believe what you’ve seen. I’ve seen stuff too.”

She kept pressing the door as her eyes flickered up to Dean.

“Mrs. Chivington. _I’ve seen things too._ And I need her help to find my brother before something real bad finds him. Come on, please.” The naked truth very seldom worked in Dean’s favor, but this was the second time in as many days that it actually did. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d swear it was a sign of the Apocalypse.

The woman sighed weightily, her shoulders drooping, and she released her grip on the door. “Come in.”

When Dean stepped inside, Lom on his heels, he saw a strange little girl staring at them from a hallway. Maybe ten years old. Man, it was so easy for little girls to get strange. Lilith was proof.

Mrs. Chivington set a soft hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Emmeline, can you check on the hens? Get some eggs?”

The girl didn’t nod but picked up a basket from the floor, dragged her still-strange gaze over Dean, and headed out the back door of the tiny house.

“Have a seat, gentlemen.” The woman didn’t exactly sound cordial as she tucked a few escaped wisps back into her severe braid, but she had agreed to speak to them and for that, Dean was grateful.

He sat on the edge of a wooden chair, leaning on his knees, choosing his words carefully for a change. “I’ve had a fair amount of experience with things that go bump in the night,” he said frankly. “I need to know if this White Witch is the real thing, if she deals with the sort of … business … that I hope she does. What did she do for your family?”

The woman clenched her hands in her lap, spoke in a lowered voice. “A fortnight ago, Emmeline returned from the chapel and she was not … right. I feared she’d caught a fever, something that made her hysterical and say things no child should say. She’s a good girl, my Emmie. But she was using coarse, unbecoming language and spoke of fighting and wanton acts. The reverend and I were not blessed with a large family; she is our only child and she kept asking about siblings she did not have. I thought, perhaps, she was imagining tales of the War with the South; we try to keep her sheltered from the horror of it but she’s a bright girl. She reads. It became so dreadful, I was forced to lock her into her room at night because she took to wandering at all hours. Mr. Winchester, I caught her trying to play faro at the Sweetwater! But not even a locked door could confine her. I prayed and I prayed … this was not our daughter.”

“Did Emmeline look different? Funny eyes? Did you find—” Dean rubbed his thumb and forefinger together “—yellow powder on the window sills?”

“That’s exactly what the Witch asked. No, I did not.”

“So, the Witch came?”

“Yes. She told us our daughter was … was _possessed._ ” The preacher’s wife could barely choke out the word. “Inhabited. She insisted upon privacy so we could not know what she actually did, though the reverend was strongly opposed. All I know is I was scrubbing blood off the walls when she was finished. But she returned Emmeline to us.”

“I’m glad it worked for you.” _Because it could’ve gone bad in so many ways, so very quickly._ “Mrs. Chivington, I really need the Witch’s help, too. How did you get word to her?”

“That’s just it; I did not. She simply showed up. I hear that’s the way it is with her.”

“That’s just … great.”

“I am sorry. I wish I could be of more help but superstition being what it is out here, it’s far better for us to just go on with our lives and not involve ourselves with the Witch again. I appreciate what she did, but I do not know how she did it. And that frightens me.”

The back door slammed and strange, little Emmeline walked in, a dozen speckled brown eggs nestled in the bottom of her basket. “Sassafras is laying again.”

Mrs. Chivington’s face grew tender and she opened her arms for her daughter to curl to her chest. “That’s lovely. Emmie, this is Mr. Winchester and his friend. They were just leaving.”

Lom had been sitting silently and now he stood. Dean reluctantly followed suit.

“You’re one too,” Emmeline said, resting on her mother’s shoulder.

“What’s that, sweetie?”

“Mr. Winchester. He’s one too.”

Dean canted his head, a little voice in the back of his brain ranting, _I knew it I knew it I knew it_. “One what?”

Emmeline smiled. “A vessel.”

“Uh …” Okay, that wasn’t what he was expecting.

“And I know where the Witch is. I like her.”

Lom’s brows nearly hit his hairline over his glasses.

Mrs. Chivington’s hands fluttered over her daughter’s hair. “Did she tell you?”

Emmeline shook her head. “I saw her house. She has a black horse. It’s out by the three striped rocks.” And then she pointed northerly.

“Emmeline, it’s not nice to tell tales—”

“I’m not, Mother.”

Lom leaned forward and whispered into Dean’s ear, “I know where that is.”

“It’s fine, Mrs. Chivington. You’ve been awesome.” Dean waggled his finger at Emmeline.” And _you’ve_ been awesome.”

“I know.” Emmeline grinned again—it was almost a smirk—and Dean felt an uncomfortable creep of familiarity.


	7. Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

Sam swam up from the dark, struggling past a suffocating grogginess and swell of pain that radiated from his left shoulder outwards. The hurt was so obstinate he hardly noticed the way his skull wanted to split open and spill out its fragile, aching brain.

His confusion was systematic, pressing in from all sides. It went from the tips of his bare feet—where the hell were his boots?—to the odd-smelling pillow under his head. Smelled like grass and mustiness, not dust. As John Winchester’s son, he was accustomed to circumstances that fringed the edges of normal. For the past seven-ish years, he was used to having no fixed address, a car for a bedroom, salt under his fingernails one day and blood the next, the stink of decay or fast food or gun oil in his nose, and waking up in a different state every morning. It was dependable in its instability, Dean being the thread that held it all together. Now he had none of it, no bearing on anything that resembled their screwed-up brand of normal.

Once again, he didn’t know where he was or why. Last thing he remembered was miles of baking desert, an endless sky, smoke in the distance, a missing brother. Somehow, he’d gotten inside. There was no humming of a home’s normal functions, no ambient sounds of a TV in the background, just the wind battering against the building. The walls were made of log, from what he could gather, though his vision went swimmy any farther than a yard past his nose. His shoulder was tight with a bandage, red seeping through white, and he couldn’t even think of moving without instigating misery. But Sam was nothing if not intractable, or “fucking stubborn” as he’d been told a hundred times before. He struggled upright, quivering, shirtless. The fraying quilt that had been laid across his middle was barely long enough to cover his shins, but it was all that sat between him and the naked air. Daylight burned in through curtains made of thin material, the kind used for cheap shirts.

He tried to swing his legs over the bed even though he barely had the strength to sit, let alone shift directions. He managed to move his right foot before stopping dead, snared in metal and cuffed to a rough-hewn bedpost. Squinting down at an iron manacle around his bare ankle, he tugged at the chain once in a token effort at escape before giving up, inching back down onto the bed and stifling a groan. He was still far too hot and dry, and he was pretty damned sure he should’ve been sweating but he wasn’t. Fine. Not going anywhere. Just another page in the book of how much his life sucked. Nothing new.

Sam had to satisfy himself with a stationary inspection of the room, now that some of the wooziness was ebbing. The room itself was snug, barely space enough for the bed and one small dresser, lit by strong sunlight coming in a single window. Dried herbs rustled in the breeze, strung from the roof beams, window frame, and tied across the headboard. Meadowsweet, yarrow, wormwood, some little white flower Sam couldn’t recall but it looked familiar, monkshood, sage, marigold … 

There were no electrical outlets, no alarm clock on the dresser, not so much as a single light bulb suspended from the ceiling. The mattress was lumpy and uneven under his backside but at least it wasn’t the ground. He thought he saw scratches in the notched logs at the corners and where they broke to make the window, but he couldn’t be sure. Could’ve been spider webs just as easily. Everything wore a thin sheen of dust, himself included, though it seemed like someone had taken the trouble to smear off most of the blood and filth. He still didn’t smell like a rose; maybe that was the cause for all the herbs. Natural air-fresheners. Not that he cared all that much; personal grooming wasn’t a priority. He just stunk, was all. The whole situation stunk, and his head was pounding like a jackhammer and he wouldn’t mind dying, in truth. Just for a few minutes.

Sam’s eyes were starting to drift closed again when he heard the secretive hush of voices—outside, beyond the window. His lids pulled apart and he strained to lift his head, to see the people whispering. They were just out of range, a male and a female standing close to the cabin by the front door, and they spoke in a language Sam didn’t recognize. This was no small feat; Sam knew bits and pieces of a great many languages, some long dead, but the words, the cadence, made no sense. The front door opened and closed with a creak and a slam and within seconds, Sam caught sight of a mounted rider cutting away from the house. The shape became a distant speck as the horse ran, kicking up clouds, yet Sam was still able to see long hair on the man, and the horse was spotted in big chunks of cream and chestnut.

He dropped his head back onto the pillow and waited, listening to the other person navigate the tiny building. Heavy footsteps for a woman, booted probably. He was certain he heard the slosh of water and God _damn_ , he was thirsty. He tried to call out but the only thing that escaped was a short hack and a whimper when pain shot through his chest. The bootsteps came closer until a woman appeared in the bedroom doorway. As suspected, she was carrying a bucket that dripped when she moved, and a basket with a dishtowel over the top. She wore trousers, a man’s shirt and broad-brimmed hat, and a kerchief around her neck. She watched him with tough, unyielding eyes over reddened cheeks; her skin was too fair to tolerate much of the weather. She took several steps into the room and poured water from the bucket into a large bowl on the dresser. Sam’s lips parted desperately, in spite of himself. He felt like a trout on a dry bank, so close to the river he could feel it in the air.

She set the basket on the floor, unknotted her bandana and sopped it into the bowl, squeezing the cloth lightly before approaching the bed. She wordlessly wrung out some small bit of water onto Sam’s lips before touching the bandana to his forehead.

“You’re feverish,” she noted in English, though there might’ve been a hint of a brogue. She pulled off her hat and dropped it onto a bedpost. Her hair, caught in a disheveled braid, was an extraordinary shade of almost-white that Sam could tell wasn’t a bleach job; her eyebrows were the same curious color, eyelashes too.

His words came out a little easier after wetted. “Where’m I?”

“My bed,” she told him with a hitch of her brow.

“No, I meant—” Sam sucked in breath when she tugged at the bandage. She didn’t seem inclined to conversation, her mouth pressed into a stern line, so he temporarily gave up the quest for answers as she slid the soiled gauze from around his shoulder. She prodded gingerly at the wound, causing a hellacious throb.

“You’re healing fast,” she said, and for reasons known only to herself, didn’t sound pleased.

“How … God, _ouch_ … how long have I been out?”

She stopped poking and drew a watch on a chain from her pocket. “Eleven hours and a quarter. Or thereabouts.” She stuffed the pocketwatch away again and began assembling the things necessary for a re-bandaging. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you this’ll hurt. Powerfully.”

“My brother …”

“Mmm?”

“Did you find another man? Not quite as tall as me, brown hair cut short?”

“I fear I haven’t.” She shook her head and began dressing the wound.

“Wait. Let me see,” Sam begged. She hesitated, sliding him a cautionary glance. “Please. I want to see how bad it is.”

After another moment of indecision, she took a hand mirror from the dresser and angled it in front of Sam. A dart of reflected sunlight shot around the room. He inched up to assess the damage, blinking away bright spots of pain, and saw she was right. It looked brutal, and the size of the bite alone made Sam nauseous. Dried blood crusted his skin, the opening of each pencil-sized puncture capped by a scab. His entire shoulder was one great, blue-black bruise, already creeping to dirty yellow at the perimeter. This should’ve needed stitches, a good baker’s dozen of them. 

Dribs of memory drifted back. The feral stink of something big and wild. A mass of darkness moving with predatory grace. An unearthly howl.

“Got your eyeful? You’re lucky he didn’t scuff up your warpaint, here.” She set the mirror aside whether Sam was satisfied or not, and tapped lightly at the tattoo inked over his heart.

“He? Not ‘he’. _It._ ” Sam watched her gaze as it flicked away from his chest to the basket of medical supplies. When she’d said “he”, she’d meant it. Wasn’t just a slip of the tongue.

Her hands moved adroitly over his damage, applied a salve that smelled something like licorice and damp earth, and wound fresh cloth around the area. By the time she was finished, Sam was trembling from trying to lift that side of his body. His upper torso felt like the no-nonsense end of a battering ram.

She didn’t speak throughout it all and began gathering up her things, hardly even blinking when Sam cleared his throat for attention.

“Hey.”

Maybe she grunted, tucking the basket between the wall and dresser.

“Hey. What bit me?”

This time she distinctly huffed air through her nose but didn’t reply.

“What. Bit. Me.”

She dipped a small tin cup into the basin and set it, dripping, on Sam’s belly, away from her clean handiwork. “Drink, then sleep,” was all she said. And Sam found he didn’t have the energy to disobey. The fact she didn’t answer was answer enough.

 

xXx

 

The third time Sam yanked on the manacle, the footboard splintered with a brittle crack, like a popsicle stick. It sounded absurdly loud in the quiet cabin, though dusk was bringing with it the chirrup of crickets. The woman had been out when he’d woken up just a bit ago. She’d left an apple and another cup of water on the edge of the dresser, within reach; she’d seemed to know that Sam would awaken ravenous. He made short work of the apple, eating right down to the core in a single minute, gulped the water, and then realized he was feeling pretty damned good for what he’d just been through. He tested his left shoulder, found it stiff and achy but tolerable. A hollered hello got no answer. He didn’t feel overt threat from the situation—she had probably saved his life twice over already—so he didn’t see the need to stay chained to the bed. It really wasn’t as sexy as it sounded.

He’d leaned forward and pulled on his trapped ankle with both hands. Once, twice. He’d felt the bedpost give and a last stern, dizzying tug sent splinters flying. He was free.

Free, but sans clothes. Now that the sun was vanishing, the familiar chill of the dry desert air was settling throughout the room. Sam tested his stability, swaying only briefly as he settled the quilt over his shoulders. He didn’t spot his clothes, but then the single window wasn’t providing much light anymore. A quick search of the dresser revealed not just women’s clothing, but men’s as well. The woman must’ve had a husband at some point, maybe still did. Sam found a pair of well-worn pants and slipped them on. Too short, of course, but fit well enough in the waist once fastened. The first shirt he set hands on was a long-sleeved thermal, hand-sewn with a few buttons at the neck. Perfectly serviceable.

He padded into the main room of the home, the wooden floor gritty and cold underfoot. One glance sealed the suspicion that he’d somehow landed in _Once Upon a Time in the West,_ same general ballpark as when he and Dean had been blipped to Sunrise, Wyoming to confiscate a pinch of phoenix ash. The big question was: why? ‘How’ wasn’t nearly such a concern; there was more than one way to skin a cat or send a person pinballing through time, as improbable as it sounded to anyone but a Winchester. However, experience had taught Sam that the reasoning for such a forced trip usually involved an entity far more powerful than him, and often times dangerously driven.

Sam found a box of wooden matches and he lit an oil lamp, warm light flooding the small space. The place was thoroughly rustic but from what Sam could remember of history, rather well-appointed for the period. The walls were lined with tools and weapons—knives, axes, all manner of pointed things—as well as shelves for dishes and books. The skulls of antlered creatures filled every bit of empty wall space and Sam had to admit he didn’t recognize all of them. That one was a prong-horned antelope but … over there to the right? A single, central horn? Seriously?

A bowl of apples sat amongst dry goods in the corner of the room that served as a kitchen, and Sam helped himself to another piece of fruit as he explored. The place was crammed with stuff, like Rufus’ cabin, and when he noticed the salt lines on the windowsills, it reminded him a _lot_ of Rufus’ cabin. Didn’t come as a huge surprise. In fact, it made him feel a whole lot better. This woman would be someone he could work with, someone he wouldn’t have to lie to or misdirect. Or, hell, even protect. She could likely hold her own, from the looks of things. And better yet, she’d never heard of Sam Winchester. She wouldn’t know his baggage. She wouldn’t judge. 

Sam poked around the books, flicked his finger over a feathered dreamcatcher that dangled from the edge of a shelf. He squinted at the labels on jars and vials, an apothecary of macabre ingredients. He found a small séance mat, made of tough smooth leather and embossed with sigils, set out as though recently used. It had bones and blood and oily residue on it, but nasty spell components notwithstanding, something else about the thing gave Sam pause. One of the sigils, drawn in chalk, looked too familiar and served no purpose in a ghostly summons. It was Enochian. Sam carded through his memory for the word, the name, but it wouldn’t come.

There was a sharp thump on the door, the latch rattling. Reflexively, Sam snatched the closest weapon from the wall—a sickle—and sunk back into the shadows at the cabin’s edge. The door opened with a swift kick. A human figure stood there outlined in fading sunlight, wisps of fair hair backlit brightly, the shape of a rifle in one hand and a pair of chicken-sized animals in the other, caught by their feet and hanging limp. As soon as she stepped through the threshold, she saw Sam. The birds hit the floor and the rifle leveled at him in almost a single motion.

“How’d you get loose?” she snapped.

Sam immediately dropped the blade and lifted his hands, palms outward. Sickle vs. gun, the gun wins. “Okay okay, sorry. I … I think I broke your bed? Maybe?” He widened his eyes and slapped on a tenuous smile.

“Step away.” The rifle jerked, directing Sam to move towards the center of the room.

Which he did without hesitation. “Don’t shoot me. Please. I know you’re a hunter—”

“What gave me away? The grouse or the gun?”

“No, no. A _hunter_ hunter. Like, um, wendigo. Thunderbirds.” Sam paused. “Shape-shifters.”

The gun lowered slightly and she stepped into the faint glow of the oil lamp. “Well, isn’t this just somethin’.”

Sam kept his hands up and would remain doing so until instructed otherwise; she had the boomstick. “I am too. A hunter.”

She stared at him and her eyes flickered with something pained. “Not anymore.”


	8. Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

It took Trudy the better part of the day to call in enough favors to score a pair of horses for an extended chunk of time. Dean got the impression there was very little she couldn’t scam when she put her mind to it, and he was determined to stay on her good side for this very reason. Lom snuck back to the room he let at a boarding house and returned with a broad-brimmed hat for Dean and canteens for the both of them. He reported he’d seen Harper and Bales in town from a distance, so the douchebags hadn’t roasted in the fire after all. Not even a blister, apparently.

They set about packing rations of hardtack, jerky and dried fruit, but no guns. Lom didn’t own one. He reasoned, rightly or wrongly, if you lived by the gun, you died by the gun. He was probably right but Dean wanted a God-damned gun anyway. Annoyed with his cajoling, Trudy dug up a poorly conditioned shotgun and a fistful of shells. Lom wouldn’t touch any of it.

Lom did, however, own a big knife and sizeable pouch of silver bits that looked relatively pure. Dean spent the remains of the day stuffing shells with the silver nuggets; some of the chunks were big enough to fashion slugs that would surely drop a were, as long as the shot flew true. It sucked to be burning daylight with Sam out there somewhere, suffering who knew what, but they couldn’t get far without transportation and Trudy’s ‘negotiations’ took time. Dean was blatantly annoyed with having so much hope pinned on this supposed White Witch. It was a huge leap to assume that she was anything more than a huckster and there was no guarantee that once they got to her lair, she’d help them at all. As soon as the words ‘witch’, ‘lair’, and ‘help’ filtered through his brain, the scheme sounded doubly futile.

By the time Trudy returned with their rides, it was too late to head out. The fat moon had risen, chasing the townspeople indoors. Night belonged to the wolves. Dean would’ve hit the hay early, readying for a dawn start time, if not for the uncomfortable noises coming from Trudy and Lom. Not uncomfortable to them, but certainly to Dean. He pressed an old feather pillow over his head and eventually dropped off into exhausted sleep.

Morning came too soon. Regardless, Dean was glad to be moving … glad until he realized how much he missed the luxury of four wheels and an upholstered seat. His horse walked—trotted, cantered, whatever the stupid animal did—with a lumpy gait and there wasn’t nearly enough padding between Dean’s ass and the saddle. How Lom tolerated it was a mystery. Guess the guy had developed calluses, or whatever. Dean forced his imagination to meander in a different, less butt-centric direction. Just made things worse.

They crossed a rolling series of large hills—small mountains, really—that had Dean clenching his knees around his horse to the point his thighs were trembling. He’d almost pitched forward on at least three separate occasions, hands fisted around the pommel to stay vertical. Lom wisely pinched back any smirk at Dean’s expense. Once across the ridge, Mongrel was hardly visible any more. The vastness of the land was quite suddenly disconcerting. Dean got why they called this “God’s Country”; it was harsh and boring and went on for fucking ever without comment. 

They didn’t talk much because the heat and dust would hang on the tongue and suck it dry. But when they did, Lom had questions. He’d look at Dean, his glasses reflecting the sun, and wonder aloud how such things as monsters and folklore could be real. He’d been to a spiritualist once, on a bet, when passing through Rochester, New York. The woman claimed to speak to departed relatives, manifest ectoplasm and foresee the future—which usually involved liberating her customer of a dollar or ten. The ectoplasm turned out to be cheesecloth soaked in gelatin, and the ghosts were just her bare toe knuckles, knocking and pinging on the floor. Not a wholly convincing performance.

Dean didn’t have any good answers for him. Just that there’d always been monsters, always would be. He didn’t dare get into the whole _Eve, Mother of All_ thing; felt too much like tempting fate. That satisfied Lom up for another half-hour, until the guy got curious again.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s it like? Your … time? It certainly does sound peculiar to say that: ‘your time.’ But then, men transmorphing into some horrific sort of beast by the light of the moon is peculiar too.”

“Yes, Lom. Yes it is.”

“So?”

Dean fidgeted in the saddle, used a borrowed bandana to swipe at the back of his neck. “Well. Everybody’s got electricity, if you can pay for it. And indoor plumbing. God, I miss my indoor plumbing. Deodorant. Bacon cheeseburgers, when you can get ‘em without …” _Leviathan sauce inside_ “… eh, never mind. Our whiskey’s better. Oh, and cars. Everyone’s got a car. I have a beauty, a ’67 Impala. Well, _had._ She’s locked up in storage ‘cause she’s one of a kind—a rose among thorns, my man—and me and my brother, we’re kinda Monsters’ Most Wanted right now. Got to stay off the radar. Off the grid. Uh, out of sight.”

“Did you leave a lady behind? I mean, apart from your Impala.” Lom grinned, quoting ‘Impala’ with a grand flourish.

Dean was quiet for a moment. “Not smart to bring a family into this life.”

“But your brother is in ‘the life’?”

“Yeah.” And then Dean resettled his hat lower down on his forehead. Conversation over.

Time sludged on. Dean never craved a pair of cheap, gas-station sunglasses as much as he did in that moment; his eyeballs ached from the bright and dry and endlessly boring spread of blanched scenery. Wouldn’t surprise him one bit to see camels or Ali Baba. He’d asked Lom at least a half-dozen times if they were heading in the right direction, like a kid in the backseat of the family car on vacation: _Are we there yet? Are we there yet?_ Lom would shrug a shoulder and bob his head, which wasn’t exactly glowing confirmation. Dean would mumble an insincere “Awesome” and take a swig from his canteen, wishing it was Johnny Walker.

The sun rolled farther across the sky, bathing everything blind. Dean hardly noticed when Lom pulled his horse up short; all he saw was dirt and infinite plugs of crispy plants, all wound up in his irritation. He kept straying to the possibility that a human being could stumble through this terrain for a day, maybe two, before succumbing to the elements. Before turning into something twitching and withering. Something like what Hell did to souls.

Lom had to whistle to break the trance, a shrill warning. Dean blinked and looked to the noise.

The piano man was staring to the north-northwest, at miles of nothing.

“What?” Dean snapped.

“See there?”

“See what? There’s a shit-ton of empty.”

Lom tilted his head, spoke carefully. “There appears to be a dead thing.”

Instantly alert, Dean now recognized movement. Birds, big ones, milling around a piece of earth too far away to parse detail and obscured by distortions of heat. He drove his heels into the horse’s side and leaned forward. “Yah, mule. Get the lead out.”

Lom caught up easily, being the better rider. As they neared the spot, all they saw were birds—no carcass, no open ribcage bared to the sky, no bits of hide or skin turning black in the sun. For just a heartbeat, vacating adrenaline left Dean clammy and faint.

“Well that’s curious,” Lom said. 

Dean rolled off his horse, hopping once to dislodge his foot from the stirrup, and took a good long stretch to let his vertebrate slot back into place. He stomped at the vultures and they bounced away, wings spread and beaks snapping, but only so far as Dean couldn’t reach them with a swift kick. Crouching, he poked a finger through their left-overs.

“Not curious,” he said, a grin starting. “Fucking amazing.” He stood up and practically skipped over to Lom, sore ass be damned. Pinched between thumb and forefinger was a tiny sand-crusted peach stone.

 

xXx

 

Sam wasn’t difficult to track; the treads of his huge boots stood out like footprints on the moon. Dean clung to the appearance of every step, scowled when he found dents the size of a body in the softer drifts which meant Sam had fallen, picked himself back up, and kept plodding. On rare occasion, it paid off to be stubborn and his brother was the king. They continued for what had to be miles. He and Lom ate on horseback, pausing only to water the horses and then vacate a little water themselves. Shallow, flat-bottomed clouds began to collect at the horizon as the sun dropped, and Lom announced they’d better set up camp somewhere before it got too dark. As much as Dean objected, the horses were not cars nor were they truly theirs to mistreat. Trudy would beat Lom to within an inch of his life if he brought the animals back in woeful condition.

Sam must’ve had a similar idea. His trail led to a hulking stand of wind-sheared boulders that once fully visible, parted in a cave opening. Dean dismounted and shoved the reins into Lom’s hand. His knees throbbed but he approached the cave’s mouth slowly, noisily. Purposefully. Lom gave half-hearted objections behind him that went ignored.

“SAMMY.” Dean’s yell bounced between the rocks and in reply, there came a noise from inside, a faint rustling. Might’ve been the scrubbing of cloth against cloth, but he didn’t dare let himself feel hope. He bounced the tarnished shotgun in his hands and inched into the entrance. “Sam, it’s me,” he said, getting nothing but relative silence in return.

It got dark, fast. With his body blocking the light, Dean strained to recognize even the roughest shapes. It sounded and felt like a tight space until his breath began to move more freely, about ten feet in. He inched forward, tapping the ground with the toe of his boot in case something—someone—laid across the path. He was too focused on the ground and didn’t notice the narrowing of the passage. He knocked his skull against a jut of rock, lost his hat, let out a choice expletive, and the cave exploded with noise.

The screeches of what had to be a hundred bats lit up the crevice. Their foul little wings pummeled about Dean’s head in the sliver of an opening, and he spun and hunched his shoulders. He squinted and watched the black tongue of creatures escape, en masse, into the dusk.

Lom smirked, peeking in the entrance. “You get ‘em all?”

Dean gave an insincere ‘ha-ha’ lip curl and continued deeper into the cave. “Can’t see shit.”

“That’s amendable,” Lom said. He untied the small lantern he’d attached to his pack and fired up the light, following Dean now that the hole was free of varmints.

Dean wormed his way through the cavity though he had to bend over like an old man. The space ballooned opened and in the dead center of the cave was a small pile of ash. Paydirt, or least indications of it. He crouched and sifted through it with his fingertips. It was long since cold but he could still smell smoke, and along the edges of the pile he found charred bits of paper. He dusted one off and pulled Lom over, angling the scrap closer to the light.

 _Salander was afraid of no-one and nothing. She realized that she lacked the necessary imagination - and that was evidence enough that there was something wrong with her brain._ That’s all he could make out, but it was modern printing and if Dean wasn’t mistaken, Salander was the psycho-genius chick with the dragon tattoo. They’d seen the movie at a half-price cinema in Tulsa one frivolous weekend—felt like a decade ago—and he and Sammy had begrudgingly agreed that sometimes, metal rings and pins stuck through a person’s dangly-down parts was kinda hot. “Yeah, he was here.”

Lom nodded and lifted the lantern until his knuckles brushed the stone roof, illuminating as much space as possible. Dean rocked back on his heels and looked around. The dusty floor had the occasional treaded footprint and there was a big, shoulder-sized smear of rusty red on one of the walls.

As his gaze wandered the perimeter, he also noticed animal shapes and stick figures: fingerpaintings, not likely Sam-generated because Sam couldn’t paint worth a damn and certainly he would’ve had more pressing issues than interior design. They were in shades of orange and slate and dirt, the sorts of colors expected of the desert.

“This is good shelter for the night, yes?” Lom asked, to which Dean grunted. “Here, then; I should settle the horses before we’ve lost all the light.” He passed off the lamp to Dean and disappeared back out the fissure.

Dean was left, briefly, alone. He hadn’t been alone since he’d crash-landed in the wrong time, the wrong place. Alone sucked. He didn’t like being alone in the best of circumstances, and this was not them. He crouch-walked to the fingerpaintings, if only to give his mind something to do and keep from feeling so gut-wrenchingly, hope-killingly alone.

When he drew closer, the paintings actually impressed him with their level of detail. Must’ve used sticks, not fingers. Some of the four-legged figures were markedly herd animals, like cows or buffalo. Their stumpy legs were splayed in a collective gallop, stampeding away from the second set of figures which were humanoid and armed with simplified bows and spears. The scenes told little tales, stories of day-to-day living. Hunting, mostly, making Dean snort wryly. As the narrative progressed, the humanoids became the prey, and their pursuers turned distinctly dog-like. Or at least that’s the way the cartoon began. The large, canine shapes evolved until they stood upright, bulky things with long-snouted heads. Dean reasoned that they were lupine, not canine at all. Werewolves were not unknown to Native America. This really didn’t surprise him, but what _did_ were the figures that followed the wolves. Again, humanoid. But these two-legged creatures had wide, gaping maws where their heads should’ve been. Their tongues, deeply forked, flailed out of the mouths like tentacles. Dean pushed out a hiss of breath.

What. The. Fuck.

Leviathans. Something that felt a hell of a lot like panic squeezed his lungs.

But that wasn’t where the paintings ended. As the crude Leviathan images made short work of the animals and humans, and splashes of red-brown were introduced into the color scheme, the half-wolves turned their bloody attention from the easier hunt to that of the Leviathans. From what Dean could tell, the werewolves were tearing the Big Mouths to shreds . And eating them.

Lom returned with an armload of foodstuff and provisions to start a fire. “I could use a dangerously strong cup of coffee right now,” he said, fatigue making his voice rickety.

Dean decided Lom didn’t need to know about the Leviathans. Not tonight. Not ever, if he could help it.


	9. Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

 

“I’m sorry,” the woman murmured, and the rifle drifted toward the floor. She flopped the birds on a table and regarded Sam longways.

“About what? I’m sure I owe you my life right about now.”

“About dragging you into my troubles, Angus or Sam or Donald or whatever your rightful name is.”

Ah, so she’d been through his wallet. “Sam. I’m Sam.”

She propped the gun in a corner. “Olivia Campbell.”

“ _Campbell?_ ”

“I know you’re not lame in the ears. Sam.”

“I—I have cousins named Campbell, is all.”

“Small world.” She grabbed a pair of bottles from a shelf and turned her back on him, pouring golden liquor into two short glasses. The pungency of whiskey floated through the room. Maybe she was beginning to trust him. “My husband is the Campbell.”

“Was that your husband yesterday? The man you were talking to?”

She looked perplexed for a moment. “Ah, no. That was a…neighbor.”

“Where’s your husband, then?” Sam found it uncomfortable—and alright, admittedly sexist—that a man would leave his wife, however capable, alone in this isolated land. There were so many perils, both natural and not. He sat down at her table and she slid a glass in front of him.

“He’s out there, fixin’ to untangle this mess.” Her eyes flicked to Sam’s injured shoulder. She swirled the liquid in her glass and took a long sip.

Sam stared at his drink. “It was a werewolf, wasn’t it?”

In his periphery, he saw her dip her head just once, without comment.

“And he’s trying to take it down alone? He might be a damned good hunter but that’s not—”

“It’s him,” the woman—Olivia—said softly.

Sam’s jaw snapped shut.

“I’m…sorry,” she said again, meeting Sam’s stare.

He couldn’t find the words. Her eyes were suddenly glossy and nose, pink. He wanted to be furious, rip her a new asshole for letting this particular flavor of monster roam the world because Sam knew better than most how uncontainable, how lethal, these beasts were. He remembered Madison, her dark eyes when they closed and how her lashes had brushed his cheek. He remembered the talons erupting from her nail beds. He remembered pulling the trigger.

When you were a hunter, you had to do certain things.

Deep in his gut, though, he’d figured it out. He wasn’t a simpleton; he knew what the bite likely meant, but he’d been clinging to a thread of hope. Threads had a funny way of snapping just when you needed them to hold tight.

Sam picked up his drink and slammed it back in one swallow, craving the burn. And fuck, did it burn. Cheap, harsh poison.

Olivia sniffed and scrubbed at her face, composing herself. “But we’re not played out yet. We have leads. I have asked for help. Prayed for it.”

“Prayed?” He laughed uncharitably. “I sincerely don’t think God has His ear to the ground these days. Probably never did.”

“ _God?_ I couldn’t possibly attempt a spell that powerful!” Her brows shot up in alarm.

“Wait. You cast an actual spell?” Sam’s gaze whirled to the séance mat and the room kept right on spinning. He grabbed the edge of the table. “Who—?”

“An archangel. I might live to regret it though, since I just drove him away a fortnight ago but desperate times …”

Sam lumbered to his feet. He squinted at the chalked sigil again, fighting an insistent wash of heat and vertigo. _Archangel, archangel. Come on, brain, work._ His vision was getting smeary and he wanted to be alarmed by this, knew he should be, but he could only muster up confusion. And a fair amount of clammy sweat.

Then two things hit him.

“Oh, crap. That’s the … the mark of Gabriel.”

Olivia nodded. Or at least he thought she did. Either that or the room was bouncing up and down, making him lose the ability to stay vertical. Sam found himself kissing the floor, the bitter taste of bad liquor on his tongue.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

Dean was not anxious to get back on the horse. Well, he was and he wasn’t. Sam was here somewhere, and if Dean knew his brother—and he certainly did—Sam had left a trail for him to follow. The longer they delayed, the more likely the desert winds were to erase those precious signposts. Dean ached from the middle of his back to his knees, and all parts in between. Who knew sitting could be such a grinding exercise? His horse nickered softly upon his approach, then knocked him solidly in the forehead with her deceptively velvety nose.

“Good morning to you too,” he muttered, curbing the urge to thump her in return. Cars, even stolen ones, didn’t smart back like this.

Lom repacked the rest of their things and tossed Dean a hard lump of barely edible bread. Coffee would’ve been nice but it was Dean’s own fault there wasn’t any; he didn’t want to spare the time. Lom refrained from comment but made a point to gaze longingly at the tin pot tied to his saddle whenever he thought Dean would notice. Just to be a pisser.

Hours worth of homogenous scenery later and following Lom’s vaguely acknowledged sense of where the witch lived, Dean hadn’t seen a single indication Sam had traveled this direction. Saw plenty of sun-baked nothing, but Dean was beginning to think Lom had misled them. Valid concern. Five minutes ago, Lom had taken the compass from his pocket and given it furrowed scrutiny, avoiding Dean’s stare.

Lom steered the horses over a small rise, which brought with it a whole new treasure trove of dull pain in Dean’s thighs. He grunted and groaned with each rocking step of his mount until catching up with Lom at the crest. The land grew grassier in sparse spreads across the expanse, and maybe a mile away, there sat an isolated building. Lom was beaming. 

“Bet that’s it,” he said, and Dean gritted his teeth. The fucker really _wasn’t_ sure where they’d been heading. Christ on a cracker. Dean took a swig from his canteen and gigged his horse forward, wincing.

It was a small homestead with a solemn air, tattered curtains sucking out the open windows and thin smoke leaking from the chimney. Scrawny chickens plucked sporadically at the dirt. Roughly thirty feet from the property, a horned skull sat atop a fence post in a crooked sort of greeting. _And here I thought plastic flamingos were weird,_ Dean mused. It didn’t exactly scream, ‘Welcome to the Neighborhood’.

And neither did the ping of a bullet ricocheting off a rock to his left. He heard the shot a fraction after the ping—a trick of the echoes against the hard land—and his horse bobbled away from the sound, nearly sending Dean plummeting. Lom reined in his own horse to calm the creature as another bullet whistled between them, close enough to feel its passage and make both man and animal flinch.

Dean sputtered curses but apparently threats did nothing to settle a horse’s nerves. “God damn son of a bitch STOP! Stupid fucking—” With a twisting hop, the horse threw Dean from the saddle and dropped him solidly on his tailbone, forcing all of the breath from his lungs. He saw white spots of agony and the dust beside him puffed from yet another close shot. Lom jumped off his horse into a crouch as a voice—a woman’s voice—hollered from the inside of the cabin.

“You’d best be telling me your business or I’ll send lead through your bellies!”

“Columbus McCallum, ma’am,” Lom shouted back, as Dean was still trying to get his chest to inflate. Lom used his horse for cover, pressed to its shoulder, peering under its chin. “And Dean Winchester. We…we need your help mightily. On my honor, I am not armed!”

The last of Lom’s words faded and there was silence from the cabin. Then the door flung wide and a man stepped out. “Dean?”

Lom cocked his head and Dean dragged himself upright, stumbling. His knees threatened to buckle from the pain, the riding, and the sudden nerve-melting feeling of relief.

“Dean!” Sam, bedraggled but sturdy, loped the easy thirty feet to Dean and slammed him with a sweaty hug.

Dean bit back a grunt and as soon as he could untangle himself, he held his brother at arm’s length and gave him a serious once-over. Sammy looked…surprisingly hale. Still leaner than he had been in years and a little sunken around the eyes, but he wasn’t sun-fried or limping. His clothes were borrowed and unbloodied, and he grinned without hesitation. “Dude, you all right?” Dean demanded. “What the hell happened? How did we get here?”

“I have a theory about how we got here, and you’re not gonna like it.”

“I already don’t like it; you mean it gets worse?”

“Oh yeah. Substantially.”

Lom cleared his throat and stepped forward, both horses’ reins collected in his hands. “I surely wouldn’t mind catching a piece of shade,” he said with a nod to the cabin.

“Sam, this is Lom. Met him in town.”

Lom squinted up at Sam, his glasses dusty. “Well aren’t you built like a snake on stilts.”

Sam looked baffled for a second. “Thanks, I think? Anyway, you say there’s an actual _town_ around here?”

Dean began walking toward the building. “Yep. Bumfuck, Nowhere. Great place to visit, but…”

“Right, right.”

“Seems they’ve got themselves a little werewolf problem. I swear, what are we, monster magnets?”

Sam chuckled humorlessly. As they drew up to the house, they were met at the door by the shooter, a woman with striking blonde hair and eyes like chips of glass. If she wasn’t the White Witch, Dean would eat his hat. She was attractive in the way of small birds of prey, fragile but sharp. He gave her a nod and a grin out of habit, and she shifted the rifle in the crook of her arm just to be sure he knew she still had it.

“Olivia Campbell, this is my brother Dean.”

“Campbell? You don’t say.”

Sam shrugged. The woman stepped out of the house to allow them passage. “Come. You can put the horses up ‘round back,” she said, ushering Lom away.

Dean whirled on Sam as soon as they were out of earshot. “Dude, _Campbell_?”

“Oh, it gets better.” Sam led the way into the small home, ducking under the doorframe. “She’s been futzing around with Gabriel. Asked for his help, even. I’m gonna guess that’s why we’re here. We’re The Help.”

“But Gabe is dead—”

“Not in the 1800’s, Dean.”

“Awesome.” Dean stared around the room, at the hunter-themed paraphernalia on the walls, at the shelves of creepy jars and plants and tomes. There was even a cauldron and a broom, though the big black pot was boiling away with something that smelled amazingly edible and he suspected she actually used the broom for, you know, _sweeping_. Two sizable birds were roasting on a spit in the oversized fireplace and Dean decided Sam definitely got the better end of the deal, here. “Okay, so if our favorite Trickster is still alive and kicking, he can send us home again, right? We just yank his chain back here like she did, and wham bam thankya ma’am, we’re golden.”

Sam stopped talking. He got that look, that ‘Sam’s thinking big thoughts’ look, the one that ran troughs in his brow and had him chewing the inside of his cheek. The one that most always made Dean’s brain hurt, and sometimes his heart.

“What?” Dean demanded.

“There’s a…complication.”

The room suddenly felt too quiet. Airless.

Dean didn’t have to ask; he just stared, expectantly. Sam pulled aside the collar of his shirt. The skin around his tattoo wasn’t smooth. It was pink and angry with healing punctures, a bite mark of massive proportions. Unnatural proportions.

To call this a ‘complication’ was a fucking understatement.


	10. Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

 

Sam felt his face flush under the gobsmacked stare of his big brother. Dean’s hands were all over him in a flash, prodding around for further injury.

“Dean, stop. I’m okay, I promise.”

Dean’s eyes shot wide and horrified. “How can you be okay, Sammy? This is anything but okay. This is ten miles from okay.”

“I know, I know. But now you’re creeping me out with the touchie-feelie business so could you just…?”

“Shut up.” Dean took a step back but he was still visibly flummoxed. And when the witch returned, that panic morphed into abject rage. He launched at her, spitting venom. She was half his size and he forced her up against the splintery wall of the cabin, glowering an inch from her face. Sam didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of Dean’s wrath so he could only imagine how Olivia felt. Actually, he didn’t have to imagine. Her face blanched and she shrank back from his tight proximity, the sudden attack catching her unprepared. And weaponless.

“Lady, so help me God, if you had anything to do with this…”

“Dean,” Sam said carefully.

“…I will take you and your hexbags and your curses and send everything to Hell where you belong…”

“DEAN.” Sam jerked on Dean’s shirt hard enough to get through the fury. “She saved my life; let up, man.”

A tense thirty seconds passed before Dean finally conceded. As soon as his hands dropped, the witch ducked away from his reach and threw him a glare.

Dean aimed a finger at her. “Don’t you give me the evil eye, bitch.”

The guy who had ridden up with Dean stood in the doorway, his mouth hanging open.

“I said _stop_ ,” Sam insisted, one hand held out in warning towards Dean, the other towards Olivia. The two were still staring daggers at each other when Sam pulled Dean aside, wise to put more distance between them and the witch. His shoulder twinged because Dean was not going to make this easy; he resisted like a dog at the end of its leash. “Look, here’s the quick and dirty. Her husband bit me; he’s the monster. But Olivia—”

“You’re on a first-name basis with _her_?” Dean spat.

Sam had a hand on Dean’s arm, the muscle bunched beneath, and he feared Dean might well punch him. “Olivia chased him off and dragged me to safety. There’s a chance—”

“Chance? Sam, damn it, you know this doesn’t end well! You do remember Madison, don’t you? Shit, Sammy.”

Olivia finally found her voice. “There _is_ a chance. The possibility of a cure,” she said, a brave set to her jaw.

Dean’s eyes darted from her to Sam, and Sam swallowed, giving a wary nod. “We’ve gotta hear her out.”

The witch smoothed her hair and set about pulling plates from a shelf. “I was readying to set out vittles; I don’t suppose you men are hungry? We can talk and eat.”

Sam noticed her fingers were trembling.

xXx

Dean was always more agreeable when he got food in his belly and if nothing else, Olivia was a good cook. She prepared a meal with as much precision as she approached her magicks. Sam had taken the opportunity to peruse her books and spell components earlier that morning, after the previous night’s laudanum had worn off. She’d apologized for slipping him the mickey, but it had been necessary. From what information she could gather, Sam’s warning signs were progressing far faster than expected. Faster even than her husband, who had been bitten two full moons ago and the Campbells been fervently researching a remedy ever since.

“…and had I not drugged your brother to the gills, he might well have turned last night,” she explained, offering Dean a second helping of roasted grouse and turnips.

He grunted but accepted the food. Naturally. “So what symptoms are we talking, here? Fuzzy palms? A tail stump? Chasing rabbits?”

The bespectacled man calling himself Lom chuckled, and Sam growled. All the color dropped from the guy’s face. Sam was pleased.

“Accelerated healing. A hair-trigger temper. Strength beyond what a normal man can muster,” Olivia said. “But that’s before the change.”

“I’ve seen the ‘after’.” Dean shook his head. “Not pretty.”

“Ten foot tall wall of muscle and murder,” Sam said quietly.

Olivia carved into her meat. “That about sums it up.”

“Fantastic,” Dean said. “But you think there’s a remedy that doesn’t involve pumping my brother full of silver?”

“The Paiute believe there is. I’ve been trading with them for years, and their shaman has been a boon for people such as us—tangled up in the things that live on the edges of the real world.” Olivia set down her utensils and folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve been told it is not fail-safe, though. You’ve as much a chance of dying as receiving cure. My husband is already with the Ute, making ready; he did not want me to be there in the unfortunate case that it failed. But now … we have Sam to consider. Tonight is the night we must try. It is the last night the moon is full enough and the spirits are agreeable.”

Dean choked out a laugh. “ _Agreeable_ spirits?”

“I’m willing to give it a shot,” Sam was quick to say, before Dean made matters worse.

Dean gawked from Sam to the witch and back again, mouth working with words that he clearly had to swallow back a few times. Finally, he dragged out a sigh. “All right, all right. But I don’t like it. Not even a little.”

“Me neither,” said Sam. “But what are our choices?”

“Bupkis.”

Sam touched at his tender shoulder. “Yeah. Bupkis.”


	11. Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

After the party was fueled and watered, the witch directed the men in readying for the trip to Indian country. “Native American,” Sam kept insisting, to which Olivia and Lom kept looking befuddled and Dean just snorted. Dean griped about Olivia’s pushiness but was secretly grateful they had someone who knew the big, gaping prairie better than an East Coast piano player with bad eyes.

It was agreed that Sam and the witch would ride tandem on her big black gelding, mostly because every time Sam tried to approach one of the other horses by himself, it would nicker and shy away, showing the whites of its eyes. The gelding was also long-legged and barrel-chested, and Sam didn’t look like a giant atop it.

The journey would take roughly four hours, by Olivia’s estimation. This would bring them to the edge of Ute territory before sundown, where Leander Campbell would meet them and escort them in. After that, she had no good guess what would happen. She didn’t even know if she and Dean would be allowed to observe the ritual, but she honestly doubted it. Dean had already made up his mind that Sam wasn’t getting out of eyeshot again, so the witch’s opinion didn’t matter one fuck anyway. It wasn’t up to debate.

Miles and miles floated by in the dry, wordless quiet of the land, the riders’ weary tension broken only by Lom’s occasional whistling or a hawk’s cry.

Dean’s last trip to Sunrise, Wyoming, circa 1861, had been an adventure. Not the idealized West of the movies, but successful enough to be remembered fondly. This? This was not a fond adventure, he decided sourly. This was a God-damned fiasco, is what it was. His ass was too numb to feel and grit had settled into every personal crevice he possessed. Sam looked all wrong in someone else’s clothes, eyes pulled into slits and bones too sharp under his skin. The witch’s strange, wheat-colored hair kept wafting and getting caught in Sam’s uncharacteristic scruff. The witch, herself, gave Dean the creeps and he wouldn’t trust her not to double-cross them, if it came down to them or her husband’s life. And if Dean was honest with himself, he didn’t believe a medicine man could cure lycanthropy.

His hand ghosted over the shotgun strapped to his side, the weapon loaded with life-burning silver. He prayed he’d never have to point it at Sam, but since when did his prayers get answered? Since about never.

Sam sat up taller and for a heartbeat, Dean thought his brother had read his mind. He jerked his hand away from the shotgun and made like he’d been reaching for his canteen all along.

“You hear that?” Sam said, his gaze lasering across the hilly, burnt land.

“What?” Dean pulled his horse up short, then the others followed suit.

“I dunno. Something metallic?”

As soon as the words left Sam’s lips, gunfire cracked through the sky and Lom’s horse screamed. The animal fell heavily, legs jutting and quirking, Lom caught underneath. Dean rolled off his horse before he could get thrown or targeted, and pulled the shotgun. Fuck wasting silver; it’d put a hole in a human just as effectively.

“There,” Sam pointed to a crest but Dean couldn’t see jack shit.

The gelding danced; Olivia struggled to hold him in check. “What is it?” she asked, her voice breaking.

“Two men. On that ridge.” Sam grabbed her rifle—even as she started to object—and jumped off the horse, landing in a puff of dust. He brought the gun to shoulder with a practiced snap.

Another shot blasted a tuft of dirt beside Dean; Sam returned fire. “Three men.” He adjusted his estimate with a sneer.

“Did you hit one?” Dean said, straining to see what Sam was seeing.

“Can’t tell.”

Olivia had dismounted and was fussing with Lom. He gasped for breath, his horse huffing in pained whistles and trying vainly to rock to its feet. “The creature is pressing the life out of him!” she cried.

“Go, Dean. GO.” Sam said. “I’ll cover you.”

Dean hesitated only a second before he slid to Lom. With the witch’s help, they managed to pull him free of the dying horse. There were no visible wounds on the man but that didn’t mean there weren’t cracked ribs; in fact Dean would’ve been massively impressed if Lom had avoided internal injuries. But Lom’s strained breathing and suddenly clammy skin indicated serious trouble. Ruptured innards or shock, probably both. He heard another volley of shots explode around him, from Sam, from the hiding gunmen.

“Got one,” Sam said, without pride.

“Lom. Look at me, man. Talk to me.” Dean tore open Lom’s shirt; his belly was already showing bruising. Dean felt something unhappy sink in his own gut.

Lom’s glasses were cracked and he struggled to find Dean’s face. “I-I fear … I may have g-gotten myself in a peck of trouble.” Bright blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth.

Olivia looked at Dean, hard. “If we don’t get cover, we are nigh done for,” she said. “There’s a Peacemaker in my pack; leave me the shotgun.”

Again with the bossiness, but Dean took it willingly. He crawled to the gelding, keeping low until the horse could provide cover. The shooting had stopped, though Dean wasn’t sure why. He dug the revolver from the saddlebag, as directed. It felt fucking glorious to have a proper gun back in-hand. Sam was still watching the near ridges, rifle up. Dean moved to him, almost knocking his shoulder.

“So?” Dean nudged.

“They smell _off_.”

“Off? You’re telling me you can smell them?”

Sam grimaced uncomfortably. “When the wind changes direction, yeah. I think they’re shifters. Weres.”

Of course. Nothing could be easy, could it? Dean raised his voice. “Harper! I know it’s you. Don’t be a fucking candy-ass; face us like a man. Or, uh, a man with a tail. Or …”

Sam groaned, just on principle. “Smooth.”

“Yeah, well.”

But Dean figured he was spot on, particularly when a person laughed from one of the scrubby rises. A figure moved, just barely noticeable as a dark speck, then it was gone.

Sam shifted his feet, clearly nervous. “Dean? Who are these guys?”

“Monsters from town. I might’ve killed one of their butt buddies.”

“Might’ve?”

“All right, absolutely did.”

Sam exhaled loudly.

“You two done chit-chatting?” Olivia interrupted. “Where’re the shooters?”

The Winchesters both paused, listening.

“I don’t hear them anymore,” Sam said.

To which Dean added, “Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

 

xXx

 

Turned out, Lom had likely cracked a few ribs and most certainly shattered an arm, but the blood was from a bitten tongue and once they jury-rigged a splint, he was mobile again. Whiskey and some odd tincture Olivia supplied seemed to keep the pain manageable. The horse was lost, however, as were Lom’s glasses. He was useless, and he slowed the party considerably, but no matter how valiantly he begged to be left behind, no one else agreed to that plan.

Lom rode with Olivia while Sam and Dean took shifts on foot, though the horse skittered at proximity to Sam. Dean actually welcomed the walking, and Sam seemed tireless. Every so often, Sam would pause and listen, nostrils flaring. It unnerved Dean, these ever-increasing changes in his brother’s demeanor. He made a valiant effort to think on it as little as possible.

At one point, they broke to water the horses and Olivia sidled over to Dean, her voice low. “I suspect I don’t need to tell you we will not make Ute territory by sundown.”

“Nope,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his chin. Sam had started to get agitated the past mile, eyes snapping at every sound and Dean would swear they looked lighter, golden, even flashing like Lom’s glasses when the light struck at certain angles. It was going to get worse before it got better; this was fact. “But we keep moving.”

They both watched Sam pace for a minute, casting a long shadow in the encroaching dusk.

Eventually, she nodded. “There’s silver in the Peacemaker. Just so’s you know.” And that’s all she said before walking back to the gelding and mounting up.

 

xXx

 

Sam had been drifting farther and farther from the party as the light became scarce and all the colors of twilight bled into the edges of the sky. Lom was sleeping on Olivia’s back but the witch was sharp-eyed, anxious. She frequently exchanged glances with Dean and he would grin back, playing at confidence but feeling only dread.

The landscape undulated with black, brush-covered hills that broke into striated red rock. There were so many spots an ambush could happen that when it finally did, Dean was almost thankful.

It wasn’t gunfire this time; it was a deep, bubbling growl that the horses—and Sam—heard before the humans.

“Incoming,” Sam shouted.

Olivia shook Lom awake and practically pushed him off her horse just before it reared up and whickered frightfully, sweaty flanks trembling. Lom blinked, prone, flinching away from hooves.

A massive shape breached the east knoll, becoming larger yet when it rose from all fours to stand up on two legs, shoulders swelling. A second hulk joined it, eyes like dirty yellow headlights, teeth like the broken grill of a Chevy truck.

“Holy shit,” Dean swore, clambering off his own mount, fingers clenched around the Peacemaker.

And then the ground shook with the rumble of the beasts barreling over the bluff. The werewolf in the lead slammed into the gelding and Olivia was flung wide. Dean heard her hit the ground as he squeezed off a shot. In the fracas, he managed to hit the horse. The monster fucking _laughed_ , spittle dripping from its maw.

Dean’s next shot, however, did not miss its mark. There was a howl and a hiss and the stink of singeing fur.

A blast lit up the dusk as a shower of silver buckshot pelted the fiend that Dean had hit. Clearly, the witch had kept her hands on the shotgun and was up and moving. The monster thudded to the ground, seizing.

The second werewolf bellowed, its scream echoing across the wasteland. It moved faster than its predecessor did and Dean’s heart pounded against his ribs as the creature ripped towards him, closing the distance before Dean could get fifteen feet. A talon caught the brim of his hat and nicked his scalp. He could smell blood in the air now.

“DEAN!” 

Sam hollered from the right but the timbre sent Dean’s hair on end, even as Dean ducked and bit the dirt, face-first. He felt the wind of an enormous limb whiz over his head. Dean whirled onto his back and cocked the gun’s hammer in one long, lucky move. He pulled the trigger without the luxury of aiming, heard a blood-freezing wail. The second werewolf crashed away from him, carried by its own considerable momentum.

Dean swiped blood and sweat from his eyes and caught sight of the moon, a hole of creamy white puncturing the dark.

“Oh … G-God … Dean …” Sam’s voice was coarse and clogged and not wholly human.

Panting, nerves thrumming, Dean stumbled to his feet. He half-ran to Sam, cringing every other step because of the acute pain in his left knee—the knee that always acted up when he fell on it. Like he’d just done.

But he stopped dead when he saw Sam. 

Sam was weaving on his feet, shuddering. His face glistened, slick with sweat and tilted to the moonrise, the rifle tossed aside. Even from here, Dean could see Sam’s shoulders roiling under the shirt, distending, building mass.

Dean heard Olivia cock the shotgun and he raised the Peacemaker to point at her head. Lom was making fearful, inarticulate sounds. And Sam’s bones were cracking, sinew and muscle stretching wetly.

“Don’t even _think_ about hurting him,” Dean told her. 

Olivia opened her mouth to speak. The werewolf Dean thought he’d killed, the one he had just plugged with a spiffy silver bullet, gave a heave and shook itself as if simply clearing cobwebs. Maybe he’d only grazed it. Maybe the witch’s bullets weren’t pure. Maybe he should get his ass in gear because _maybe_ the fucker was fixing to eat his face off.

“Down!” Olivia screamed and Dean dropped, silver scattershot stinging across his back. The werewolf shrieked and launched at Olivia, narrowly avoiding Dean’s head. She flung the now-empty shotgun at the monster but it batted the weapon aside like a twig. Dean was attempting to get turned back around, his knee pounding with fresh injury, when a huge shaggy mass careened to intercept the beast.

Another werewolf. 

Dean threw a desperate glance to where Sam had been standing and saw a pile of shredded clothes. He knew his mouth was flapped open but he didn’t care.

The giants collided unrestrained, all crashing teeth and bared claws that could gouge canyons. The earth shook, their bodies slamming like thunder. The newcomer was markedly larger than the wounded one. It was almost impossible for Dean to equate the feral, slavering _thing_ with his brother but it became clear, in short order, that at least Sam wasn’t ill-equipped for the job. He was not what hunters were accustomed to in the 21st century. Hell, he wasn’t even particularly close to what Dean had seen in the jail.

Though the other’s eyes shone with a furnace-bright frenzy, it couldn’t outmaneuver or overpower Sam, who pinned the lesser beast to the ground with a single powerful arm. Sam looked to be grinning, lips pulled tight against sharp teeth. He hesitated, head tilting towards Dean, and then he licked his chops. Sam’s eyes were as black as pitch. In a blur, Sam fell upon his prey and ripped and ripped. Blood spilled so fast, the dust was muddied with it. The pinned werewolf yipped and shrieked and gurgled and finally, fell still. The carcass shriveled, fur dropping away like that of week-old roadkill. It was Billy Harper. He was shredded from chin to navel and stained red with his own ichors, ribs pointing to the starry sky. Heart gone.

Dean swallowed back bile. There was a gap of weird near-silence when all he could hear was his pulse in his ears and the slow-motion pounding footfalls of a monster approaching.

The last werewolf stopped in front of Dean, towered over him, breathing heat and the coppery odor of blood. He blocked out the moon and dripped red onto Dean’s boots from his parted jaws. His black gaze bore down until Dean had the courage to meet it.

The air shifted. Bone and muscle contracted in a sudden, raw shudder. Sam, the _person_ , groaned and would’ve stumbled backwards had Dean not grabbed his arm, fingers almost slipping through the mess.

“Son of a bitch,” was all Dean could think to say.


	12. Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

It wasn’t as though Sam couldn’t have controlled himself; it was that he didn’t want to. All the rage and fear had balled up into a nucleus of hate, and that hate had become a force of nature. Or supernature, as the case might’ve been. He had freed Dr. Hyde, and it’d felt like damnation. It’d felt like giving up, like surrender. In that moment, he hadn’t cared if it had meant his undoing; he’d always known he would kill for his brother. So he did.

The moon washed him in the cold light of revelation. He’d torn out a heart, ate it even as it thudded in his hand. He was a freak. Again.

Sam trembled in the desert night air, wearing nothing but blood and sand. He looked at Dean, prepared to meet the anguish in his brother’s eyes.

But there was no anguish, merely understandable shock. “Um. That was …”

“I’d never hurt you, Dean. I swear.” Sam sounded like he’d been gargling thumbtacks, or more accurately, chewing his way through a ribcage.

“You unshifted.”

“Yeah? I suppose?”

“Because you wanted to? Because you didn’t want to hurt me?”

Sam nodded, feeling a hesitant smile make its way out. “Yeah.”

“Huh.” Dean turned to Olivia, a finger raised in thought. “What do you know about the Leviathans?”

She blinked at Dean’s sudden segue. So did Sam, actually. “I’ve never set eyes upon one, fates forbid,” she said. “Never heard tell of a hunter who had! I honestly fancied them to be extinct, or mayhap never more than far-flung legend.”

“Hate to break it to you, but they ain’t legend. Sammy, that cave you were in, did you see the paintings?”

“What? No,” Sam said. “I was too busy, oh, you know, surviving.”

“There was graffiti in the cave—”

“Pictographs?”

Dean squinched his eyes. “If you say so. They looked like kid-drawings of werewolves making dog food out of chompers.”

“There is obscure lore that confirms this,” Olivia agreed, “that werewolves—called the Behemoths—were purported to be the sworn and true enemy of the Leviathan. As the mongoose is to the snake. There was a great and ancient war and the Leviathan were rent limb from limb and banished to the oceans.”

Sam had moved to poke around in the ruins of his clothes, and he paused. He filtered through the fresh, new, horrible experiences he’d just suffered: the blind, single-minded instinct to destroy; the prideful swell of authority; the sheer power within the body he’d worn for a few scant moments. It had felt like having the Devil stuffed back inside but this time, Sam still had a say. He’d managed to turn it on and off again … exercise a sliver of control. And Dean seemed to be on-board with it. “Are you suggesting I might be a _biological weapon_?”

Dean gave a shrug and hoisted his brows.

“Folks.” Lom cleared his throat. “We seem to have company.” He was staring along a westerly ridge. Backlit by the low-hanging moon was a small silhouette, a child … a girl.

Dean leveled his gun at her.

“Emmeline?” Olivia said, dubious.

The girl approached slowly, picking her way around tufts of weed and bits of dead Billy. She stuck a wand of rock candy in her mouth and gave the scene a round of applause. “Bravo!” she said around the sweets. “I gotta say, Rocky and Bullwinkle here never fail to entertain, but _you_ —” she wagged her candy at the witch “—are getting on my last nerve. First you give me the ol’ heave-ho, then you beg for my help? What’s it gonna be, sister?”

“I’m…I’m sorry. I just…”

“Yeah, yeah, whatevs. I send you THE infamous Winchester brothers, the least you can do is get me a fruit basket. Jeeze.”

Dean lowered his gun. “Gabriel.”

The little girl curtsied. “Nothing gets by you, does it, Deano? Oh hey, by the way, Sammy, nice look on ya, man.”

Sam straightened up and stared at the angel’s strange little vessel. Yes, he felt a tad underdressed, but there wasn’t much he could do about it; his clothes were rags. He drifted his hands in front of his crotch and shuddered, skin cooling as the adrenaline burned away. “Not in the mood, Gabriel. What do you want?”

“He just wants to screw with us,” Dean growled.

“Not true!” Gabriel had the nerve to look indignant. “Okay, maybe just a little. But I’ve had my fun now and believe it or not, I like you knuckleheads so I’m here with a peace offering. I’ll boot-scoot you right home, boys. Back to the land of Big Mouths and Obama Care. You just say the word.”

Olivia stepped forward. “Wait. The Paiute’s cure—”

Heat lightning danced between unseen clouds; off along the horizon, thunder rolled. A storm was brewing and something was making Gabriel squirm. She pursed her lips and waited for the rumbling to fade. “What about it?”

“Does it work?”

The little girl’s face screwed up in thought. “That’s a good question. Yanno, I’m not sure. It’s a slippery thing, switching scientific classifications and all. Makes the gene pool pretty damned muddy. But hey, if a vamp can be unvamped, why not a werewolf? Guess you’ll have to play the game and find out.”

The sky cracked in a jagged white bolt, fizzing with energy. The entire party flinched under the brief flare.

“Who’d you piss off this time, Gabe?” Dean asked.

“The heavenly host has no sense of humor. War this, war that. Borrrrrring.” Gabriel pouted. “Okay, so I guess this is my cue to tell you two to shit or get off the pot. Stay for the cure or run home again, home again, jiggity jig. Pick your poison, boys.”

Sam locked eyes with his brother. In Sam’s mind, there was no debate. A trace of a smile quirked Dean’s lips.

Dean walked over to Lom and bent to grasp the piano man’s hand. “Take care of yourself.”

“I always do,” Lom grinned wearily.

Sam nodded to Olivia, but since he was bare-assed naked and coated in dried blood and grit, he didn’t think she’d appreciate a parting hug.

The heavens roared again, and an archangel—in the skin of Emmeline Chivington—snapped her fingers.

 

_fin_


End file.
